The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

The WebQuest: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has multiple visibile and invisible goals without compromising any of the goals be it for the students, the school, or the teacher. This makes it a complicated lesson series and if you want to use this WebQuest as it should be used, you will have to prepare well in order to be succcesful. It is not something you pick up from the shelf and presto!

The goals for the pupils are clear. The school, who commissioned this WebQuest, asked for an assignment that would enhance their literature reading curriculum in Havo 4 (school goal). I wanted to try out the feasibility of an audiobook in the classroom (teacher's goal) and I have therefore incorporated it into the lessonplan. This has, however, some serious implications: the students will have to be able to acquire the audiobook and they have to have a way of playing the audiobook. This could lead to some problems, although you could ask them to listen to it at school, or have them read the actual paper novel, but only as a last resort as the quest is written with the audiobook in mind.

The students have to listen to the audiobook in order to finish all the assignments, so it is in their best interest to listen, but I added the seven "tests" to force the pupils to listen to the recording. It is imperative that the teacher makes this very clear to the students. The teacher should take the short "tests" very seriously.

The Webquest will take 10 lessons of 45 minutes, but you should spread those lessons out over a 10 week period, so the pupils will have ample time to listen to the audiobook and prepare the homework, the classroom assignments, the portfolio and the final essay. The assessment is designed with a test in mind. The test will be exclusively available on WIN-toets.

Quite Obvious, of course, but: the teacher should read, listen and re-listen to the novel and be familiar with the other resources in order to be able to answer the questions in-depth!

Good luck!

Standards

HAVO 4 English (non-CT)
2nd term
ERK - towards B1
Listening - Speaking - Writing - Reading - B1

Credits

Many thanks to the following people who helped with the webquest design:

-Kristina Goodnight (HU-coach)
-Ben Hoefnagel (SSC-coach)
-Daniel Hamerslag (SSC-coach)
-My critical friends: Daphne Boots and Judith Harinck

Other

Model key available