Students are tasked with joining Detective LePlant and his partners, Bud and Sprout, to unlock the many mysteries of plant life!
This webquest is beneficial to teachers who cover plants within their science curriculum. The Great Plant Escape is easy to follow and keeps students engaged. The goal of this webquest is to not only introduce students to plants, but to increase their understanding of our relationship with plants and how food grows. While the content is a science topic, skills from all curriculum areas are used. One benefit, is teachers can choose to cover the entire webquest or just portions of it. They can also offer this as a choice to students or assign specific cases based on the needs of the individual student.
The Great Plant Escape is very well organized and easy to follow. The content is broken into six cases to be solved. This webquest includes a detailed teaching guide which provides the following information for each case:
- Before You Begin: compelling questions to get your students thinking about the topic
- The Classroom: provides information regarding any needs within the classroom
- Introduction: specific student learning goals for each case
- Background: provides detailed discussion topics and required prior knowledge to better prepare students for success throughout the webquest
- Growing Deeper: suggestions to extend learning
Within the teaching guide, teachers will also have the opportunity to complete a short form to request a poster for their classroom! This is always fun!
Necesitas en español? No problemo! There is a spanish version available, as well!
The Great Plant Escape is an award winning, engaging webquest for you and your students to enjoy!
You can try it our for yourself here: The Great Plant Escape
In addition, be sure to check out the additional links under the Links tab for more information and resources to use with your class!
I hope you will agree that this is a great activity for your students!
References:
https://extension.illinois.edu/gpe/index.cfm
Christina-
ReplyDeleteWere you a marketing major for awhile? After reading about marketing in reference class, I think you have figured out how to sell some great information literacy skills! As for the Webquest itself, I agree that it is a good one. It has a TON of information, broken down into separate pages. I was a little confused about the intended audience, though. It seems like it would be for grades 2-4, but then it gets into a lot of depth about vocabulary and the different aspects of the plant. I think it would probably be a bit challenging for some of the younger readers, so you may want to decide who you're going to target with these. This seems like it is almost an entire unit for plants, which is great. For myself, I would probably only do one or two of the cases/mysteries. The variety of the activities are excellent as well. Overall, there is a lot to dive into, it's self-contained, and provides a lot of information that meets science standards. Thanks for sharing this Webquest!
~Tony
I agree about the age level. I would use some portions of it for 4th grade. I do like that it fits a range of abilities so that I could differentiate based on skill level. Thanks for the nice comments! Always good to see!
ReplyDeleteHey Christina!
ReplyDeleteYour webquest is perfect for elementary students. I agree with you that your webquest is “beneficial to teachers who cover plants within their science curriculum.” While I am not up-to-date on everything present in science curriculum, it is easy to see what an awesome stepping stone this is to teachers and students. I would agree that it is easy to follow and engaging. I would also agree that teachers can easily pull any section or case to work on with students because the information was easy to follow and not super text-heavy, thus making it perfect for whichever grade you decide to use it for.
Another aspect that I really liked about your webquest is that “students are tasked with joining Detective LePlant and his partners, Bud and Sprout, to unlock the many mysteries of plant life!” This reaffirms your statement about keeping students engaged because they will feel like they are on a mission. Lastly, I really liked that there is a button para español. Este es perfecto para los estudiantes que necesitan un poco de practica. This also makes your webquest more applicable to a larger audience. Thank you for sharing!