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Overview

Guide Toucan Sam Home is a Web Quest that has been designed as project based learning. Through the use of this Web Quest the kindergarten and first grade children will work in partner pairs reading Spanish vocabulary words to help Toucan Sam (the Fruit Loops bird) find his way home. After successfully reading the Spanish vocabulary the children learn about the rainforest. The ending tasks ask for the children to compare and contrast the rainforest to their backyard and to color a picture of the rainforest using the Spanish color words they have learned.

Understanding the young age of the learners using this quest, it will be necessary to have the teacher lead many parts of this activity. Please note that a "true" Web Quest assigns specific roles to each learner. Guide Toucan Sam Home does not promote such specific roles because of the young age of the students.

Guide Toucan Sam Home was designed to incorporate the Gregorc's Learning Styles, Multiple Intelligences, as well as, target many levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.

Ensuring that all lessons have sense and meaning is very important to promoting long term memory. It is essential to open up the quest and relate Toucan Sam's situation of being lost to an event in the child's life. To promote this personal connection, the teacher will lead a discussion with the class asking if there was ever a time when they could not find Mom or Dad. This is detailed in the Introduction.

Additionally, this Web Quest addresses the affective domain. Each child will be held accountable for his/her part in the journey, as well as, being responsible to his/her partner. The Web Quest has been designed using "kid" friendly colors, pictures and motivating sound bytes. Further motivating the child to complete this Web Quest are the use of the computer, an individual assignment, as well as, a partner Venn Diagram.

Understanding the Primacy/Recency Effect this lesson is broken into Prime-Time 1, Down Time and Prime-Time 2. On day one during Prime-Time 1, the students will travel through various cities learning Spanish vocabulary. The beginning of Down-Time allows the students to color pictures of the rainforest. During Prime-Time 2, students will show the rainforest pictures to classmates and the teacher will ask questions reviewing Spanish color words. On day two during Prime-Time 1, students will learn about the rainforest. During down time, students work with a partner completing a Venn Diagram comparing the rainforest to their backyard. During Prime-Time 2, the teacher will close the activity with a class discussion about the importance of Toucan Sam returning to the rainforest and asking the students why he cannot stay in New York.

Modification

This Web Quest will take differing amounts of time depending upon the needs of your class. A natural breaking point for day one would be after the completion of learning the Spanish vocabulary and the coloring of the rainforest picture. Day two can pick up with rereading the Argentina page and the information about the rainforest so the children can move ahead and complete the Venn Diagram.

Goals & Objectives

The learner will :

work cooperatively with a partner.
make comparisons of the rainforest and their backyard.
discuss why it was important for Toucan Sam to go home.
correctly identify the Spanish color words by using them to correctly color the rainforest picture.
be exposed to Spanish vocabulary for animals and fruits.

Curriculum Standards

World Languages

STANDARD 7.1 (COMMUNICATION) ALL STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE IN AT LEAST ONE WORLD LANGUAGE IN ADDITION TO ENGLISH. THEY WILL USE LANGUAGE TO ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION, UNDERSTAND AND INTERPRET SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE, PRESENT INFORMATION, CONCEPTS, AND IDEAS WHILE MAKING CONNECTIONS WITH OTHER DISCIPLINES, AND COMPARE THE LANGUAGE/CULTURE STUDIED WITH THEIR OWN.

Language Arts

STANDARD 3.1 (READING) ALL STUDENTS WILL UNDERSTAND AND APPLY THE KNOWLEDGE OF SOUNDS, LETTERS, AND WORDS IN WRITTEN ENGLISH TO BECOME INDEPENDENT AND FLUENT READERS, AND WILL READ A VARIETY OF MATERIALS AND TEXTS WITH FLUENCY AND COMPREHENSION.

STANDARD 3.3 (SPEAKING) ALL STUDENTS WILL SPEAK IN CLEAR, CONCISE, ORGANIZED LANGUAGE THAT VARIES IN CONTENT AND FORM FOR DIFFERENT AUDIENCES AND PURPOSES.

STANDARD 3.4 (LISTENING) ALL STUDENTS WILL LISTEN ACTIVELY TO INFORMATION FROM A VARIETY OF SOURCES IN A VARIETY OF SITUATIONS.

STANDARD 3.5 (VIEWING AND MEDIA LITERACY) ALL STUDENTS WILL ACCESS, VIEW, EVALUATE, AND RESPOND TO PRINT, NONPRINT, AND ELECTRONIC TEXTS AND RESOURCES.

Technological Literacy

STANDARD 8.1 (COMPUTER AND INFORMATION LITERACY ) ALL STUDENTS WILL USE COMPUTER APPLICATIONS TO GATHER AND ORGANIZE INFORMATION AND TO SOLVE PROBLEMS.

Social Studies

6.1: ALL STUDENTS WILL UTILIZE HISTORICAL THINKING, PROBLEM SOLVING, AND RESEARCH SKILLS TO MAXIMIZE THEIR UNDERSTANDING OF CIVICS, HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, AND ECONOMICS.

STANDARD 6.6 (GEOGRAPHY) ALL STUDENTS WILL APPLY KNOWLEDGE OF SPATIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND OTHER GEOGRAPHIC SKILLS TO UNDERSTAND HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN RELATION TO THE PHYSICAL AND CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT.

Career Education and Consumer, Family and Life Skills

STANDARD 9.2 (CONSUMER, FAMILY, AND LIFE SKILLS) ALL STUDENTS WILL DEMONSTRATE CRITICAL LIFE SKILLS IN ORDER TO BE FUNCTIONAL MEMBERS OF SOCIETY.

Extension Activities

Color Song

Books to Read

The Umbrella by Jan Brett

The Living Rainforest An Animal Alphabet by Paul Kratter

The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry

Printables

Venn Diagram

Rainforest Picture-You may choose to write the Spanish color words on the picture depending on the level of your students. Another alternative would be to create a number code on the picture. (ex. 1= rojo)

Special Note About Sound Bytes

This Web Quest requires the use of a media player. This will force a pop up window when the students click on the Spanish words. To eliminate this pop up during the Web Quest it is recommended that you open the media player on each computer and minimize it to the tool bar.