Webquest: Drown by Junot Diaz

I explored webquest resources for Drown, a collection of short stories by Junot Díaz. The stories are set in both the Dominican Republic and the US, and they focus heavily on Dominican culture. To help my students understand the background of the country as well as the protagonist, I would suggest http://exploredominicanrepublic.com/links.html. This site provides links to statistical data, traditional music, history, travel information, and more. Also, some of the links are in Spanish, which could be extremely useful in my classroom. Unfortunately, some of the links do not work, but enough of them do that this site could be a great tool to introduce students to Dominican history and culture. The teacher would have to supplement the resources with questions or assignments, because the site is more information-based than activity-based.

I came across some additional websites that focused on the lives of Dominican immigrant children and Dominican writers, but I found problems with links and other technical issues. Overall, I did not have much luck finding webquests for Drown. A great class activity requiring critical thinking and technology would be to have the class create a webquest after reading the book. They could work in groups to create several different options, approaches, and themes.