Put the Title of the Lesson Here

A WebQuest for xth Grade (Put Subject Here)

Designed by Put Your Name Here

Put Your E-mail Address Here

Introduction | Task | Process | Evaluation | Conclusion | Credits | Teacher Page

Introduction

[Select a grabber to entice the learners. Use a newspaper headline, phone call to a lawyer's office, or video reenactment to the criminal or civil scene.]

Task

[The task has five parts. Part 1 includes the selection of a case and the casting for each of the trials. Part 2 includes scaffolding for legalese in a two-column format for the legal term and what it means in standard English. Part 3 includes research and case preparation to develop a plan of action. Part 4 is the actual trial. Part 5 is the judgment rendered.]

Process

1. Provide a short list of cases from history, literature, or current events. You may wish to include anticipated future cases.
2. Brainstorm in pairs in class other cases which could be included in the longer list.
3. Develop a glossary of legal terms.
4. Scaffold this process by providing a vocabulary chart to record findings from film, television, literature, history, and life. You might include periodicals, Ask an Expert, or Internet research to augment information on the case.
5. While doing the research, be sure to keep in mind that the other groups will be cross-examining your character during the trial scene. Prepare accordingly to be able to answer questions according to what your character would answer in an authentic court case.
6. Have a class discussion debriefing the analysis and consolidating any discrepancies in analyses from different groups.
7. Now ask groups of students to use their analysis to create a patterns of questioning and scaffold this by providing a storyboard, prompted writing page, some scripting, or other guide as appropriate.

Evaluation

Describe to the learners how their performance will be evaluated. Specify whether there will be a common grade for group work vs. individual grades. You may want to have separate rubrics for individual and group work.

Conclusion

Put a few sentences here that summarize what they will have accomplished or learned by completing this activity or lesson.

You might also include some rhetorical questions or additional links to encourage them to extend their thinking into other content beyond this lesson. To foster the habit of lifelong learning, give them links to additional information here that they can pursue on their own.

Credits & References

List here the sources of any images, music or text that you're using (with permission, of course). Provide links back to the original source. Say thanks to anyone who provided resources, help or inspiration.

Don't relist all the links you've already included. They're self-documenting.

As a matter of style and to keep ownership clear, all pages that you call up that are external to this site should appear in a new window outside of this frame. Add "TARGET=_BLANK" to the link to bring this about.

List any books and other analog media that you used as information sources as well.

Include a link back to The WebQuest Page and the Design Patterns page so that others can acquire the latest version of this template and training materials.

You might want to include the following statement:

"We all benefit by being generous with our work. Permission is hereby granted for other educators to copy this WebQuest, update or otherwise modify it, and post it elsewhere provided that the original author's name is retained along with a link back to the original URL of this WebQuest. On the line after the original author's name, you may add Modified by (your name) on (date). If you do modify it, please let me know and provide the new URL."

Last updated on (put date here). Based on a template from The WebQuest Page