FICTIONAL HEROES & VILLAINS HALLOF FAME

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1 FICTIONAL HEROES & VILLAINS HALLOF FAME Grades 3 4 Webquest by Diane Findlay Introduction Congratulations! You ve just been accepted as a youth intern at the brand new Fictional Heroes and Villains Hall of Fame opening in your town. Eventually, you ll get to do exciting things like tell stories, set up displays, and guide tours for groups of children visiting the museum. But first, the staff has some decisions to make. What heroes and villains from children s stories should be featured? Among all of fiction s good guys and bad guys, who are the best and worst? Who do we most love, or love to hate? These decisions must be based on solid research. What better place to start than to look at what makes a hero honorable or a villain vile, and which ones are the favorites of kids like you? Your task is to do the research to learn about literature s heroes and villains and work with other youth interns to recommend the starting lineup of characters for the museum to spotlight. Task You ll begin by watching a storyteller share a classic fairy tale with a clear hero and villain. Then you ll conduct a survey of kids at your school to determine their favorite heroes and villains. You will be part of a team assigned to visit a particular grade and class to collect data. You ll combine your data with those of your fellow interns, and study it to learn what it has to tell you. You ll submit your results to your museum staff advisor (your teacher), recommending ten heroes and ten villains to feature in the opening exhibit. Process 1. With your fellow interns, watch storyteller Mrs. P share a classic fairy tale, at Listen carefully as the villain works his evil trickery and the hero saves the day. Share ideas as your museum staff advisor (teacher) leads discussion. (What character is the villain? What makes him a villain? Who is the hero? What qualities make him heroic?) 2. Gather your supplies paper and pencil for taking notes and claim a computer workstation. February 2012 Web Resources LibrarySparks 1

2 Webquest 3 Complete the Heroes & Villains Worksheet Part 1 found on pages 3 4. Not all websites you ll visit are written for kids, so you might need a dictionary. Print the survey form at the end of this part of the worksheet found on page. 4. Collect survey data by completing the form. Start by recording your own personal favorites on your copy of the survey form. Divide up your assigned class with others on your team to be sure every student in that class gets to answer the survey questions one time. Ask students for their opinions and record their answers on the form. Use the back of the form if you have more than five students to survey. 5. Complete the Heroes & Villains Worksheet Part 2 on page 5. Print the data tables at the end of Part II found on pages. 6. Meet with your grade/class team to enter your combined data on the data tables. Enter each hero or villain s name only once; tally votes for that character in the second column. When you finish entering data, count the tallies and enter the totals for each hero or villain in the third column. Which character or characters got the fewest votes? Which got the most? If you have more than one team for the same grade level, combine your data with the other teams on fresh copies of the data tables to come up with collective totals for all the students in that grade and enter them in the fourth column of each row for to the appropriate character name. 7. You re not done yet! There s more to learn from your data. Take copies of your combined grade level data tables back to your computer workstation and complete the Heroes & Villains Worksheet Part 3 on pages Meet with your grade/class team one last time to compare your results from Part III. What sentences did you write? What other conclusions can you draw from your data analysis? 9. Next you ll meet with all of your fellow interns (classmates). Compare the different grades top ten heroes and villains. As a whole group, combine the votes for all grades surveyed into one pair of data tables. Enter totals for each character in the right column. Who are your top ten favorite heroes and villains? Those are the characters you will recommend to feature in the museum s opening exhibit! Submit the list to your museum staff advisor (teacher). 10. Work with your museum staff advisor (teacher) to further analyze the data. Look for age/grade trends do younger students favor different heroes or villains than older ones? Does one grade level name more different heroes or villains than another? Plug the data set for all grades combined into one comprehensive graph or table, on the web page, showing just the top ten heroes and top ten villains. 2 LibrarySparks February 2012 Web Resources

3 Heroes & Villians Worksheet Part 1 Name What makes a good hero or heroine in children s fiction? Visit this web page and scroll down to the bulleted list of qualities in the Heroes and Heroines as Exemplars of Universal Character Traits section: Highlight, copy, and paste the list here. Check out this site: Starting with Paddington Bear, click on the Next arrows to see the whole group of children s book heroes. Choose one of those heroes whose stories you know. Which of the qualities from the list above does your character have? Type them here. What other qualities of character, special talents, or circumstances make that character a hero in the story? Add them here. Visit this site: Read the list of favorite villains in children s stories and the notes about each. From the descriptions, write your own list of six qualities that many fictional villains have, like the list you copied for heroes above: Continue onto the following page. February 2012 Web Resources LibrarySparks 3

4 Heroes & Villians Worksheet Part 1 Name Now to go Scroll down to page 4. What does this page say a survey is? Type your answer here. List two more examples of things you could learn from a survey, different from those on the page. Read the short article on conducting surveys at Type the four steps in here. You will ask your questions of every member of the class you survey. According to this article, is this a census or a sample survey? Underline the correct answer. Print a copy of the survey form here. Continue with Process Step 4. February 2012 Web Resources LibrarySparks 4

5 Heroes & Villians Worksheet Part 2 Name What is data? Go to and look up these words. Type in their definitions. Data: Qualitative Data: Quantitative Data: Is the information on your survey form qualitative or quantitative data? Underline the correct term. To analyze your data, you ll need to combine it with the data collected by your teammates and turn it into numbers you can work with. Print the data tables here. Note: Your data sets for the rest of this webquest are the numbers in the TOTAL columns of your tables. Continue with Process Step 6. February 2012 Web Resources LibrarySparks 5

6 Part 2 Heroes & Villians Worksheet Part 3 Part 2 Name To learn more from the information you collected, you ll calculate some values based on the data set on your combined grade level data tables. Go to data-analysis-flash-cards. Click through the flash cards and highlight, copy, and paste the definitions for the terms below. Range: Mean (or Average): Median: Mode: Figure out each of those values for your grade level data sets for both Heroes and Villains and type them in below. HEROES Range: Mean (or Average): Median: Mode: VILLAINS Range: Mean (or Average): Median: Mode: Continue onto the following page. February 2012 Web Resources LibrarySparks 6

7 Part 2 Heroes & Villians Worksheet Part 3 Part 2 Name Think about the numbers you calculated. What do they tell you? Write a sentence for each data set (one for Heroes, one for Villains) that expresses some conclusion you could draw based on the results of your analysis. Here s an example: If you have a very low average (mean) number of votes per named character, it means that there were lots of different characters named and not too many duplicates. You might say, Based on our data, students in this grade have lots of different favorite fictional heroes. Conclusion about Favorite Heroes: Conclusion about Favorite Villians: Go to Enter the data set from either your grade level heroes or villains data table into the bar chart. Click on Show % to add percentages to your visuals. Experiment with replacing the letters at the bottom of the bar chart with hero or villain names or initials. Look at your data in different forms bar graph, line graph, and pie chart. Which form do you think does the best job of showing what you learned about favorite fictional heroes or villains? Print your data in that form. Now print your completed worksheets and continue your task with Process Step 8. February 2012 Web Resources LibrarySparks 7

8 H V Webquest Conclusion Thanks to your survey and data analysis skills, the grand opening of the Fictional Heroes & Villains Hall of Fame will be a huge success, featuring just the right mix of characters from children s stories! Here are some books about heroes, villains, or analyzing and using information that you might enjoy. Fiction The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman. HarperCollins, The Great Graph Contest by Loreen Leedy. Holiday House, Heroes and Villains by Anthony Horowitz. Kingfisher, How to Save Your Tail: If You Are a Rat Nabbed by Cats Who Really Like Stories about Magic Spoons, Wolves with Snout-warts, Big, Hairy Chimney Trolls and Cookies Too by Mary Hanson. Yearling, With Love, Little Red Hen by Alma Flor Ada. Atheneum, Nonfiction Charts and Graphs by Heather C. Hudak and James Duplacey. Weigl Publishers, Great Graphs and Sensational Statistics: Games and Activities that Make Math Easy and Fun by Lynette Long. Wiley, The Hero s Trail by T. A. Barron. Puffin, Heroes and Villains by Peter Gray. Franklin Watts Ltd., LibrarySparks February 2012 Web Resources

9 Favorite Heroes & Villians Survey Questions: Who is your favorite hero from children s stories and why? Who is your favorite villain? Why? Name The Grade I Will Survey: The Class I will Survey: Favorite Fictional Hero Why? Favorite Fictional Villian Why? Student 1 Student 2 Student 3 Student 4 Student 5 H99 LibrarySparks February 2012 Web Resources

10 Favorite Heroes Survey: Data Table Hero s Name Vote Tally Class Total Grade Total LibrarySparks February 2012 Web Resources

11 Favorite Villians Survey: Data Table Villian s Name Vote Tally Class Total Grade Total LibrarySparks February 2012 Web Resources