Curriculum Standards & Assessment
The ThinkQuest Narrative Competition provides a comprehensive way to meet curriculum standards. For example, researching and writing content can align with Language Arts standards, designing multimedia components can align with Visual Arts standards, and learning how to use the online publishing tools in ThinkQuest Projects can align with Technology standards.
In addition, your team's topic can be focused on meeting a standard in a specific subject area (for example, a project about world hunger could be designed to meet Social Science standards). Consult your local Department or Ministry of Education for information on curriculum standards for your state, province, or country.
Additional resources:
- International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE): In the United States, the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) are commonly used.
http://cnets.iste.org
- Partnership for 21st Century Skills: ThinkQuest aligns with the suggested guidelines for preparing students to become global citizens and successful contributors to tomorrow's workplace.
http://21stcenturyskills.org
If you will be incorporating the ThinkQuest Narrative Competition into your classroom curriculum, you may wish to create specific rubrics to assess your students' progress. (Note that ThinkQuest Judges will evaluate all entries according to the
Evaluation Criteria.)
Free assessment and rubric tools:
Disclaimer: It is the team's responsibility to ensure that a) information on third-party sites aligns with ThinkQuest standards and
Rules and b) technology created using third-party tools can be hosted on ThinkQuest Projects and does not otherwise breach the
Rules. All links to third-party sites are provided only as a courtesy to make teams aware of additional resources that may be helpful; ThinkQuest does not manage, endorse, or take responsibility for the content on third-party sites.
Team Building
When forming a team, it's important to select students who are collaborative and bring different strengths and perspectives to the team.
Once you have formed a team, introduce your students to the ThinkQuest Narrative Competition by talking about how much fun it will be and explaining that millions of people will be able see their work on the internet. Beyond conveying enthusiasm, you also want to give students a real sense of what the competition involves:
- If students are new to ThinkQuest Projects, show them examples of projects.
- Review the Rules to ensure that students understand the competition's requirements and Entry Submission Deadline.
- Review the Evaluation Criteria to ensure that students understand how their entries will be scored by the ThinkQuest Judges.
- Review any additional rubrics or expectations you have for students.
To help the team work together effectively, it's also important for students to share their own expectations. Here are a few suggestions for discussion topics:
- Ask students to share their ideas about what makes a successful team and to come up with their own ground rules. For example, how will they make decisions? How will they work out disagreements and conflicts?
- Discuss and determine the different roles and responsibilities that students will have on the team (for example, team leader, writer/editor, artist/photographer, etc.).
- Although students may have individual roles and responsibilities, remind them that they will be working as a team and relying on one another for success.
You can use the
Teamwork Guides for additional team-building activities.
Project Timeline
One of the first tasks as a team is to create a project timeline. This activity requires students to proactively consider all of the tasks they must complete throughout the competition and decide how they can use their time most effectively.
Teams have approximately four months to develop and submit their entries for the ThinkQuest Narrative Competition. However, the actual time needed to develop an entry can depend on many factors, such as school schedule, experience and motivation level of students, and scope of the project.
View the Checklist page for sample four-month and two-month timelines. These sample timelines are intended to help guide your team, but it's recommended that you develop your own, team-specific timeline that includes items such as team member assignments, major milestones and deadlines, and team meetings, field trips, and other events.
Once you have developed your own detailed timeline, make sure it is accessible to all team members, so they can refer to it regularly and update it as needed.