This past week I worked with a high school Spanish class on a Spain project. The students researched various topics about Spain including food, art/artists, music/dance, festivals, architecture, soccer, education, bullfighting, languages, family structure, and government. After researching they designed their website structure, thinking about layers and the best way to organize it so that their readers can easily navigate. The criteria for the project included content, links and navigation, graphics, layout, spelling/grammar, work ethic, and copyright.
Tool of choice for their website: Weebly
We found this website creation tool to be extremely easy for students to use.
Resources to assist you with using weebly:
Weebly.com: Easiest way to website: This video is a great introduction to weebly and one we showed on the first day in the computer lab. After watching students created their accounts and got right to work. Because the video covered the ‘how tos’ the students had very little trouble navigating through the website.
Weebly Tutorial This is a great weebly website on ‘everything to do with weebly’. Great resource!
In order to add to the authentic purpose the teacher will now have her students navigate through their classmates’ websites in order to answer various questions about Spain. During the whole process they will use their Spanish language skills to write, read, comprehend and process Spanish information that will help them when they take their trip to Spain.
What a great project idea, and one I was very excited to be a part of!