Methods

 

Session One

The teacher will explain that schools throughout the world have home pages on the World Wide Web. Many of these pages are designed by students and are viewed by students and adults around the world. The format, content, and style of these pages vary greatly.

After this brief introduction, the teacher will show students how to navigate the Web to find home pages of high schools in the United States and to use the links to further pages. Students will then work in pairs to view as many home pages as they can in the time remaining in the session.

Session Two

The teacher will explain the assignment to write a five paragraph essay comparing and contrasting home pages of schools in two different states. Students will then brainstorm the differences they found on the preceding day, developing a list of various topics and style formats. Then they will work in groups to classify the differences they will write about in their essays.

Session Three

As a prewriting strategy for their papers, students will browse various high school home pages, as they did during the first session. They will choose the two home pages they will compare in their essays and take notes on the similarities and differences using the categories they created in the previous session.

Session Four

Students will work to put all similarities and differences in categories which will provide the body paragraphs for their essays. Then they will develop a thesis statement for their essays and topic sentences for their body paragraphs. Then they will begin writing an introductions.

Sessions Five and Six

Students will finish introductions and write body paragraphs.

Session Seven

Teacher will lead class discussion as to what students like the best in the home pages. They will discuss what they would suggest putting in a home page for their high school. A list of these ideas will be kept by a class scribe. The teacher will explain that the conclusion of the paper will begin with a restatement of the thesis statement and then explain what the author thought worked best in the home pages viewed.

Session Eight

Students will share writing in groups of four. Revisions will be suggested in these peer groups. Students will then help each other with editing/proofreading.

Session Nine

The teacher will display the lists made during session seven and ask if any additional points have surfaced. The class will work together to decide what the most important topics should be included in their own high school home page. Students will then divide into groups of two or three, each working on a separate topic page. One group will work on the main home page, providing the links for the topics of the other groups. They will use their papers and the lists generated during sessions two and seven to remind them of the various style and format options available to them. They will brainstorm in their groups as to what should be included and how it should look.

Session Ten

The teacher will explain how home pages must be posted in HTML (hyper text mark-up language) and will demonstrate Web Weaver to the students.

Sessions Eleven-twelve (and more as needed)

Students will work to create their own page links to the home page.