Teacher's Page
Learners
Year Level: Grade 8 or 9
Teaching Area: This webQuest can be incorporated into an English, History or Social Studies class.
This webquest has been designed to help students gain an understanding of language evolvement and how this is being affected under a globalizaed environment. By the end of this webQuest, students' critical thinking and analytical abilities will be developed as they need to form their own opinions by looking at different people's articles in the process of research. Also, collaborative learning will be demonstrated by asking students to create a collaborative report together using wikispaces.
Suggested teaching sequences:
This WebQuest should continue over a number of lessons. Teachers should allow students at least 3 lessons of research and note-taking, and then another 2 lessons for working on their presentation. It is expected that students will continue to do work at home. The first assessment task, the presentation should be due 2 weeks after the introductory lesson. The collaborative report should be due a week later.
1. Give students the task first and ask them to choose one language from the list.
2. Have a general discussion with students about their thoughts on languages. Here are some ideas to start off the discussion:
- Ask students what languages they are fluent in or have previously studied.
- Ask students what languages they are interested in learning, and why.
- Discuss the history and foundations of languages.
3. Discuss further with students on the relationship between globalization and language development. Questions can be used such as:
- Current trend in language development.
- How it has been affected by globalization.
- The possible effects of globlization on languages.
4. Have students begin their research by following the outline listed on the Process page and remind them that they have to answer all the listed questions in order to finish the task. Teachers should give guidance to students with research and other task-related problems. This process has been designed to help students develop their research skills and critical thinking abilities. This is done through analyzing the information about their chosen language and then looking at different people's attitudes about language and globalization to form their own opinion.
5. After their research, ask students to give a presentation to share their findings with other classmates. In this process students improve their oral presentation skills and develop the ability to negotiate and discuss their opinion with peers. Have students follow the criteria sheet located on the evaluation page.
6. After that, have students to write a report in a group of 3 or 4 people by using wikispaces. Students collaborative learning skills will be enhanced as they need to discuss with group members using the group page in Wikispaces to reach an agreement on the writing of the report. This includes:
- The structure of the report
- The contents of the report.
7. Encourage students to do more research on future language development. Further resources and questions are provided on the Conclusion page.
Resources Needed
The collaborative learning aspect will take place in the group page in Wikispaces, so it would be a good idea to have all your students have a username so they are able to log into Wikispaces. While anyone can edit the work there, and students are meant to show what they have done using a specific colour, teachers can also monitor the amount of work done by looking at the history feature of Wikispaces. This allows teachers to be able to mark fairly when assessing the level of contribution students had for their collaborative report.
Evaluation
This WebQuest provides teachers with criteria sheets to evaluate their student's performance. These are found in the Evaluation section of this WebQuest.