Here comes a Hurricane!

A. Computers with high speed internet access and printing capabilities. Adobe Flash player and Windows Media player need to be installed. Headphones are highly recommended for private listening to media.

B. Writing utensils, paper, the Hurricane Journal (document follows).

C. Chalk or Dry Erase board with chalk or markers and erasers.

Have students go to web address http://zunal.com/webquest.php?user=1647

Use the questions in the introduction section to prompt discussion about hurricanes. Use a concept web to record terms offered by students on the board. Discuss and explore any affective concerns. This should be used to informally assess students’ background knowledge and affective concerns dealing with natural disasters. Once any conceptual/affective issues have been discussed and/or addressed instruct students to move onto the task section of the webquest.

Have students work individually to complete the webquest and the "hurricane journal". This activity can be performed as a class or in groups if more scaffolding is needed or if limitations in computer access exist. If the group is small enough, or you have a display projector, one computer can be used. Another option is to use this webquest in conjunction with other stages of activities exploring the same theme. Be aware that students may need clarification or direction as they move along the webquest. Actively support and engage students to ensure progress. The purpose of the webquest is to be an engaging, interactive, and enjoyable literacy activity for students. This likelihood of success decreases if the students find themselves lost and demoralized in the World Wide Web without appropriate support or direction.

Another important consideration is that the paragraph frame should be modeled and thoroughly explored in the class before students attempt to complete it. Explore variations on sentence starters for sequential exposition. Model and explore how one might "offer words of encouragement", etc. Review public speaking skills, particularly if you plan on evaluating students on such criteria.

Listening: Students listen to peers’ presentations, as well as online media to gain information.

Reading: Students negotiate instructions and tasks on in the printed "hurricane journal" as well as on the informational sites online in order to gain and process information. The items on the "hurricane journal" are designed to be varied in difficulty to encourage scaffolding as well as higher order thinking in the negotiation of academic text.

Writing: Students are given the opportunity to create an announcement, using writing to process information gained from receptive skills. Students are prompted to write in order to convey information in a meaningful way.

Speaking: Students use speech to articulate background knowledge, as well as present information gathered from academic texts to their peers.

c. Use small classroom experiments to physically illustrate the dynamics of hurricanes. National geographic for kids suggests dropping food dye into the center of a bowl of swirling water to demonstrate how clouds form the spiral shape of a hurricane: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngkids/trythis/tryfun3.html

Students will be evaluated on the criteria outlined in the webquest rubric. The rubric implies the use of both informal and formal evaluation as well as formative and summative. The "hurricane journal" offers formative/somewhat informal assessment of the development of concepts needed to negotiate the final draft and presentation. Observing how well students gather and process information will convey the amount of reinforcement/scaffolding needed to aid in students acquisition of the target objectives. The formal, summative evaluations are the final draft and the presentation. These can be manipulated to offer more or less scaffolding based on the proficiency of the students. The activities and assessments outlined in the webquest are only a guideline for a very general level of difficulty. These will be need adjustment to ensure individual students the greatest opportunity for building upon previous knowledge while stretching areas targeted for improvement.

This lesson is an attempt to illustrate how technology can be incorporated into an interactive literacy experience in a content-based ESL classroom. Given careful planning, a webquest can be used to structure a learning activity that encourages students to explore authentic texts scaffolded through a combination of resources and activities that are appropriate for your students’ learning level. Webquests are tools that are ideally implemented to structure or facilitate literacy learning, however, it is apparent that webquests and other technology based activities should not be the only resource for exploring the target objective of a lesson or unit. This, primarily, is due to the fact that technology is not always dependable. The best-laid plans and hours careful planning can be all for naught due to a downed server or bad web link. Also, given the varied accessibility or student familiarity with a technology, it is important to ensure that other non-technology based sources of authentic text (books, articles, student-produced texts, etc.) are available and incorporated into any lesson or unit that implements technology assisted learning.

I believe that this lesson would be successful if enough time and background support is given to complete it. I feel that an activity such as the webquest is best suited as a framework for relatively long term exploration of a topic that is integrated into other resources of authentic text. Suggesting a topic like hurricanes opens up the potential for affective concerns. These cannot be taken lightly; therefore using a webquest (or any resource for that matter) in the exploration of such a topic requires planning for activities that adequately address potential student concerns (for example research on hurricanes’ effects on humans and what students can do to help and who students can talk to about their feelings).

In summation, technology as a resource in the classroom (in this case, a webquest) can be used to create an interactive literacy experience in itself, or implemented further as a framework for more long term and varied exploration (through integration with other resources). It is important to recognize an increased level of technology requires an increase in planning and preparation, not a decrease: any lesson that includes technology includes a contingency lesson as well. However, when used appropriately as an extension of a second language content area curriculum, and everything works, technology can be used to promote variety, interactivity, and intrinsic motivation in the ESL classroom.