This Web Quest will help your students learn all about the fascinating animal group called the marsupials. It is intended for students in the third and fourth grades. It requires students to be at least at the third grade reading level. Students must be able to gather information and be able to present it in a colorful manner. Students must also be somewhat internet literate, however this site has links to nearly all of the information students will need to complete the project. Student's creative writing abilities will also be expanded on during the explorer's journal part of their project. Student's imagination will then be exercised when they create a colorful picture of a marsupial they create. The students will then write a short page about this new marsupial and its features.
This brochure should take students roughly four to five hours to complete, I estimate two hours of gathering and reading information and then two hours of putting together the brochure. The rough draft of the explorer's journal should take an hour to complete, then the students should be given an additional hour and a half to revise and then type their journal. When students get to part three of the project they will need an hour to sketch their creative marsupial, plus another 30-45 minutes to write a rough draft of the features of their marsupial. I recommend that students are given another two hours to create a colorful picture and type a final copy describing the features of this animal. If you feel that more time is necessary it is by all means okay to give your students more time on this project. I estimate this project will take a total of eleven to twelve hours to complete and should be spread out for about two weeks for an hour or two per day.
suggested grading rubric for the brochure
suggested grading rubric for the explorer's journal
suggested grading rubric for the creative marsupial