Webquest Review for Maus

Cited for 11th and 12th graders. This webquest assignment was very interesting to me but I have some doubts as to its appropriateness for high school students.

The quest jigsaws the class into several groups and asks each group to evaluate the book according to the groups’ field. The groups are: Art teachers, English teachers, Social Studies teachers and Holocaust Survivors. The three teacher groups must decide if Maus is appropriate to teach and the survivor group must decide if Maus is respectful or offensive to survivors.

Students in the groups are further jigsawed to read one of five web based and library based articles that support a position for the group. In the end the group comes together and puts together all their arguments that support or oppose a decision on a provided graphic organizer.

What I like about this webquest: The question seems rather simple but the reading content is rather sophisticated; it tackles everything from textual criticism, aesthetics, historical narrative, classroom standards – college level stuff. I guess that is also why I don’t like this webquest. The reading material is very sophisticated, in some cases the links are no longer there and in other cases the connection between the arguments that students need to make and the reading is a bit disconnected, students would have a hard time extrapolating.

I would appropriate some readings and perhaps one or two questions from this webquest, but I would NOT assign this to a (typical) 10th grade class reading Maus.

Since this is a core book for my curriculum I really wanted to explore everything available. I was surprised to find this is the ONLY webquest available! If anyone knows of an additional one Maus, please let me know!!!

The Watsons Do a Webquest

I was interested in finding a webquest for The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis, and, at first, it appeared that I'd stumbled on quite a few. Alas, it turned out that a majority of the duplicated essentially the same assignment: to keep a notebook just as Wilona Watson, the family's matriarch, does during their trip from Flint, Michigan, to Birmingham, Alabama. It is Mrs. Watson herself who proposes the assignment. She asks students to "capture not only the adventures that our family encountered on our drive south, but also the memorable events that happened in Birmingham." To assist the students in assembling the information, the assignment proposes different roles for the students, including: travel guide, newspaper reporter, historian, lawyer, and scrapbook artist. The assignment is broken down into assignments to be performed by, say, the travel guide or reporter or artist. Under each subheading, there are links to web sites that might be useful for the students to use. For instance, the scrapbook artist is asked to find fifteen representative images and to provide a 3-5 sentence caption for each image.

I really liked about this webquest that it would allow my students to learn a great deal about the Civil Rights era, a moment in American history that, in my experience. they find very compelling. This assignment may sacrifice depth in favor of breadth--the tasks don't demand the highest of the higher order thinking skills--but it does offer students a chance to acquire a great deal of information about a great topic and to do so in a student-centered format. In addition, the tasks allow for flexible grouping. It's possible to assign certain roles to certain students (based on learning modalities or interest), to use jigsaw, or even to have students work in pairs or individually. I'd want to prepare all of my students, before embarking on this assignment, with a series of mini-lessons about how to use information found on the internet without committing wholesale intellectual theft. (http://www.crews.org/curriculum/la/watsons.htm)

Greek Mythology Web Quest

Last year, one of my first units was on Greek Mythology. In retrospect, it was a bit of a bomb; I am determined to make it work this year, and plan on teaching as my first or second unit to 9th graders. The web quest linked above will, I think, help to make the unit a success. It provides links that clearly summarize important relationships, emphasizes key concepts, makes relevant connections to students' lives, and provides lots of choice. I'm not sure how much of an actual "quest" it is; it doesn't require too much clicking and seems to be, really, more of an online assignment. Yet this is what I like about it--it's focused, comprehensible, the links works, and the work represents an appropriate level for beginning of the year 9th graders. I imagine using the quest as our first major group work project--groups of four might have three days to come together on a really nice project that they present. Conveniently, this would scaffold the units big individual project--the creation of a personal myth. The only draw backs I see to this quest are it's references to middle school and the creator's very specific project, but I could get around this by just re-writing and re-posting links within my own page or whatnot. Nice!

The Great Gatsby Web Quest

One of the most successful activities I had my 11th graders do last year was a JIGSAW on the historical context of Native Son. I gave each group a packet of resources on a historical person/group/event related to the novel (i.e. the NAACP, the Jim Crow laws, the Great Migration, etc.) and had them present their findings to the whole class. They really seemed to enjoy working as a group, gaining knowledge on a subject through a focused set of resources, and then being the experts on it for the whole class. it also really enriched their understanding of Native Son. This Web Quest on the historical context of The Great Gatsby employs a similar technique while saving me the hassle of gathering resources and making dozens of photocopied packets. It really seems to have some great resources on The Roaring Twenties, and a few more final products than a simple oral presentation. I would have liked to see a cleaner layout and some guiding questions for each group, but this is still a very useful resource.