Results!

So I last wrote about my upcoming Webquest on Explorers....and I know that I expressed my worries about how my students would respond. Well, it turns out that my Webquest was definitely a learning experience.

My students had just finished 2 hours of county-wide testing and I was hoping that the Explorer's Webquest would be a great "fun" activity after sitting for such a long time. But...what I didn't consider was their behavior after sitting straight for 2 hours, lets just say it was just plain awful! Luckily we were able to do our lesson in the computer lab itself other wise I think laptops in the classroom would have been more chaotic. Although behavior was not great and my lesson did not achieve as much as I wanted I thought it was a great inquiry based learning activity that allowed my third graders to work in cooperative groups, which sadly because of standardized testing does not happen much. I hope that this will remind me how much the students' enjoyed working together! It was a "learning experience" at best and challenged my authority and teaching ability for that matter, but I know that using technology in a new manner really did make the student's excited about the material. And that is enough for me to keep trying!