I have not been doing very well keeping up this blog this year.  My last post was on October 25th.  That’s because we have been so busy.  We have already completed our first Core Knowledge Unit about mountains, and we are now learning about the American Revolution.  I started writing this post about our Mountain Trek webquest on October 29th, and I’m just now getting back to it.

Our classroom may be located in the midwest, but we’ve been traveling the world virtually to learn about the world’s mountain systems.  Our Mountain Trek WebQuest is always a good way to start the school year and introduce my fourth graders to reading and writing about non-fiction.  This is part of Core Knowledge World Geography, and it also ties into our science Earth Materials unit. It’s a great way to review map skills as well.

This is the third year that I’ve done this webquest, and this year I made a few changes.  Instead of Quest Garden, where the webquest was previously hosted, I moved it to a wiki.  You can see it at www.mountain-trek.wikispaces.com.  I updated and added additional resources.

The kids love doing the research and visiting websites to learn about mountains, but I have not been satisfied with the quality of the writing.  In the past I have had them put their own Field Guide together with plain paper and a construction paper cover.  This year I decided they needed more guidance.  I realized I was making a mistake in assuming they could read non-fiction material, synthesize the information, and write in their own words.  I knew that with more guidance on my part, they could do this.  I created more of a framework for them to use with guiding questions on each page.  I tried to set it up as a word document, but I ended up doing some cut and paste to satisfy my perfectionist tendencies.

Mountain Trek Field Guide

I also did more modeling to demonstrate how to read and than select important details to support a main idea.  We created word webs for each part of the project.

The result was the best writing I have seen in the three years I have done this project.  I learned an important lesson about not withdrawing support prematurely.  The children were able to be successful independently only after they had sufficient practice and experience in report writing.