Teacher Process

Teams and Roles

Although this WebQuest groups students into teams of four with roles assigned as “specialists,” you may prefer to assign more students to each team and/or assign roles differently.  You may also choose to assign each team to a specific journey to be sure all journeys will be presented.

One possible alternative arrangement is to add a Finance Specialist and/or a Writer to each team. The Finance specialist would be responsibile for estimating the costs of the tour.  The Writer would be responsible for creating a booklet of short descriptions for tour guides to use when introducing tour groups to each destination. The estimates and/or the booklet would be presented in addition to the final promotion product.

Another alternative would be to add two more Media Specialists to each team and require each team to produce a complete package of promotional materials for the tour: a presentation, a brochure, and a Web page.

A very different approach would be to assign each student to become a comprehensive expert on a particular place St. Paul visited on a particular journey.  In that case, each student would perform all of the duties of all of the experts pertaining to that one location.  Team size would be determined by the number of destinations to be visited. Teams would still work together to create their final products, with each member responsible for editing and proofreading his/her own portion.

The Jigsaw Classroom

Teachers should visit Jigsaw Classroom to learn more about the Jigsaw Classroom process to facilitate and enhance learning in groups and teams.

Equipment:

Students should be able to use the computers independently or in small groups.,

If this equipment is not available to the students, then you may decide on acceptable substitutes for the various required items, such as poster board displays instead of the presentation and hand-drawn versions of maps and charts.  Students could also use a table in a word processing program to make data tables and charts, instead of using spreadsheets.

Schedule

This lesson can be scheduled in a variety of ways to suit various classroom situations. 

If students have access to computers at home, portions of the quest could be assigned as homework, thereby reducing the length of time to be devoted to the entire project to perhaps 1 week.

If students generally do not have computers at home, then you will need to allow adequate time for computer use during the school day.  This will vary depending on the classroom situation and access to a computer lab or laptops for the students.  The process could then take 3 weeks or longer to allow sufficient time for research, collaboration, creation, and presentation.

Teachers should also consider whether this project is exclusively a religion project or also a language arts and social studies project, because they could utilize class time from any of those subjects.  If the students also have a regularly scheduled computer literacy class, that time might also be devoted to this project with the cooperation of the computer literacy instructor.  Teachers who teach self-contained classrooms may make this determination on their own, while others may need to consult other teachers and collaborate with them to schedule this interdisciplinary project. Standards addressed by this project are included in the Standards section. 

This is one possible way to schedule the WebQuest:

  1. Day 1. Students are divided into teams, by whatever process the teacher chooses. Teacher (or team members, at teacher discretion) will designate one person for each of the roles as described.  Team Session 1: Teams begin WebQuest visiting sites designated for the entire team.
  2. Day 2. Media Center/Library visit: Students do research and planning in accordance with their roles, choosing route and destinations as a team.
  3. Day 3. Expert Session: Students will meet with their “expert” groups (i.e., all  Scripture Scholars, all Travel Specialists, etc.) to share and compare results of independent research.
  4. Day 4. Team Session 2: Students report back to their teams to share the results of their research and finalize their plans for their final product.
  5. Day 5. Media Center/Library visit: Team members use computers to create their portions of the final product.
  6. Day 6. Team Session 3: Students complete and polish their final product.
  7. Day 7. Team Session 4: Students rehearse presentation with their fial product, involving each member in speaking (may need to simulate a Web site or a multimedia presentation using printouts of pages or slides, if unable to use an actual computer and media projector for rehearsal).
  8. Days 8-10 (as needed). Team Presentations: Each team presents its promotion product to the entire class.
  9. Final Day. Reflection: Each student reflects on the project and writes about the experience.