Week 6 - part I

One more week is over. This was a hard week, since I started in school and we had a smaller week due to Carnival holiday. The course has been providing so many interesting things for us to read, reflect, and try to implement, I will need twice the time of the course to be able to get at least 70% of all the resources we have.


I started this week a little frustrated, since I tried to create my WebQuest in GardenQuest, but did not succeed. It seemed my browser version was not supported, but I upgraded my IE to version 8.0. It did not work. Anyway, I will try to do it with the other suggested site: Zunal. I have already had lots of ideas to create WebQuests, I am sure they will become great projects. For example, in a semester I worked with a group of Intermediate 3 students, they read “Oliver Twist” and as the final project for this class I suggested the creation of a Newspaper. All the topics discussed in the book became topics for articles, ads, editorials, etc. Unfortunately, the conclusion of the project got a little loose, and now I see that a WebQuest would tie the information, and a rubric would guide the work.

Talking about rubrics, I had already read a lot about it, specially related to oral presentations, since there are some tasks that, in my opinion, are more difficult to be evaluated, or more, graded. Rubrics have always seemed to me as a clear and objective path to guide not only the grading of the students, but also to give them feedback, and to avoid misunderstandings. I have tried them sometimes with my students, even for self-assessment, and the results were very satisfactory.

I am feeling more confident at the end of this week, although last week I got a little sick and thought that everything would go late this week, but I can see the project getting organized now, and even without the opportunity of testing it with real students, I can see that all the tasks are getting connected and adjusted. Step by step, the picture is being completed, and I can already see that the result will be a success. For all of us.

Marcia