Teacher Page

by Nancy McKeand, St. Joseph Seminary College

This WebQuest is designed to give students who are reading books by Merton a better understanding of who he was.

Teacher Introduction

My ESL students read books by Thomas Merton in the spring semester. This is not an easy task, but they are motivated. I want to provide them with an introduction to Merton before we actually begin with his books as a way to prepare them for what will come. This WebQuest will let them learn about the man and gradually work their way into his writing.

Learners

This WebQuest is intended for college age ESL students for use in a reading course in which they read books by Thomas Merton.

Teacher Process

I estimate that this WebQuest will take 8-10 hours over a period of about 2 weeks for the students for whom it is written to complete.

This WebQuest does not require any special technology, assuming you have computers with Internet access. If access to Writely is not possible or practical, the diaries could all be done either in a regular word processor or even by hand.

Teacher Resources

There are really no other resources needed for this WebQuest except an interest in Thomas Meron and his writings.

I ask students to use an online collaboration tool known as Writely. It allows a number of students to work on a document at a time. If this is not possible for you and your students, they can come up with the compiled diary in a more traditional way. Writely is fun, though, so I would recommend it highly. I would also recommend that you become familar with Writely and maybe even use it with students before the WebQuest begins.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License