Lesson six

I had so much fun this week creating a webquest! I was daunted at first and overwhelmed because I had trouble invisioning what to put in it. Many of the webquests online were disconnected, and if I could find one to work it seemed too complex for the ages of children I would be working with.

One dilemma I faced was in choosing an age to focus on. I am studying Special Education, which means I could be working with children anywhere from 3 years to 23 years. I decided to focus on creating a webquest for middle school children with learning disabilities, although children without disabilities could use this webquest too. The material is congruent with regular education studies of Ancient Egypt. The reading may be somewhat difficult, but when students are paired together is not so much of a challenge.

The tasks I chose are challenging, but are achieveable. When completed over a series of days or weeks, the lessons can be adapted to include slower readers, as well as students with short attention spans. Each lesson has reading and writing imbedded in the activity, as well as a "challenge" section that serves as a rewarding game. The children learn about Ancient Egypt while improving their technology, reading and writing skills.

I want to make more of these! I'm hopeing to learn how to imbed voice-overs into the text to let students who struggle severely with reading, or beginning readers be able to participate more easily. I think high-school students would really benefit from learning to make these. I found that I was doing a great deal of research on my topic just to make the webquest. Imagine how students would benefit from creating webquests on a specific time in history, or scientific principle or novel. Below is the link to the webquest I created.

http://questgarden.com/132/49/4/111002102906/index.htm