Web Quests:

Our school wanted our students to be more computer savvy so I designed "Web Walkers" last year. All of the children who had computers at home enjoyed it. It was basically a contest to get children interested in doing more educational things on the computer. We had planned to run it all year, but enthusiasm died out about the end of December so we informed our parents with our Christmas newsletter that our "contest" would end then. In a nutshell it's simply sending your kids on safe "Web Quests!" sort of like a treasure hunt through the Internet.

My co-teacher and I would spend some time checking out kidsites on the net and finding fun, but educational things for them to do that would relate to our standards and give them several options to do. The child with the most things done would be our Web Master for the month.

Click on the links to see our September & October Web Quests, Certificate, and direction Letter Home. 

This is a picture of our hallway bulletin board display where we set it all up. We would tape up the children's work as they handed it in. Passer's by were very interested, and parents really supported the project.

We also had a competition going between my class and the other Y5 class to see who had the most Web Quests each month.  The posters hanging from the ceiling displayed the photo of  the Web Walkers of the Month from each of our classes.  The students' work hung around the display. The board in the middle posted what the Web Quests were. This was the internet sites that we sent home to the parents at the beginning of each month. We even had other teachers and parents of children not in our class ask us for copies so they could do it with their children! As you know you can really waste a lot of time surfing  the net for safe and educational sites for your students.  

The rectangle on the bottom is a key board. The posters on either side are graphs of each of our classes. The graphs were a great math extension.

I added a "Do you have a computer at home?" and "Does your child know how to use it? " questions on my "getting to know your child"question form that I handed out at the beginning of the year. Click on the link for a copy. So that parents who did not have a computer at home, but wanted to participate, didn't feel left out,  we let them know that we would be going to the computer lab and that they could come before or after school and work with their child. No one opted for this in either of our classes. We also gave the assignment sheet to our computer teacher but he didn't have time to visit the sites either.

If there is an interest in this, let me know and I will post November and December Web Quests. Also check My Favorite Kid Links on our home page. Click on the link to go there. HOME Are your schools pushing you to do more computer work with your students too? Take a moment to comment!

We discovered that a webquest was a wonderful way to get parents involved and our students more computer saavy!