Webquest Proposal

Date: 4/27/10

Teacher(s) Name: Dr. Shutkin

E-Mail Address(es): ocoughlin13@jcu.edu, jartman13@jcu.edu, jgerrick13@jcu.edu

Grade Level(s): Geared toward middle school students, but could be applicable to high school

Title of WebQuest: Breaking the Cleveland Curse

Content Areas: Math, Physical Education, English (to a lesser extent)

Description/Abstract of Lesson: The student plays the role of a Cleveland Cavaliers statistician, assisting Mike Brown in putting together his most effective groups of players to play in the fourth quarter, based solely on their statistics.

Timeline of Lesson: Three days

Introduction

With the NBA playoffs beginning, the Cleveland Cavaliers decided to hire a new statistician to assist Coach Mike Brown in deciding what combinations of players throughout the playoff games will suit the team best, based solely on their regular season statistics from the 09-10 season. It is important to consider that all players need breathers, the game covers 48 minutes, so not everyone will be able to play the entire fourth quarter, and every player has a specific role on the team. The entire city of Cleveland is counting on a championship this season, so you need to do everything you can to make it happen!

Task

The Cleveland Cavaliers need our help! Cleveland Cavaliers player’s names will be drawn out of hat for fairness to all students. Use the techniques that we have learned during the year to calculate the players fourth quarter averages. Coach Mike Brown wants to know what players he needs to play, but more importantly what players to play during crunch time. So as the new statisticians for the Cleveland Cavaliers, we have been assigned to figure out points per fourth quarter, assists per fourth quarter, rebounds per fourth quarter and turnovers per fourth quarter. After you have determined all of the statistics for the players you must set up a starting roster and then times for substitutions. Let's Go Cleveland!

Resources

Statistics

http://www.nba.com/cavaliers/stats/

Statistics for each member of the Cavs for the 09-10 playoffs.

[U.P] LeBron James 56 Points Vs Toronto Raptors (03.20.2005) (Career High)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEMtf1ppGJg

Video on Lebron James Career high

Cleveland Cavaliers Statistics - 2009-10

http://espn.go.com/nba/teams/stats?team=cle

Cleveland Cavaliers 09-10 regular season stats

Cavstheblog

http://www.cavstheblog.com/?p=1300

A blog that shows statistics for all teams as well as how it is explained

Cleveland Cavaliers

http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2009/05/lebron_james_historic_mvp_seas.html

Cleveland's Plain Dealer online website giving Lebron James' stats for the 09-10 season

Learners

This WebQuest is geared toward middle school students in the content areas of math and physical education, and also language arts to a lesser extent. Students may need to acquire a general knowledge of basketball if they do not have one already. It is important for them to understand how points are scored, what rebounds are, what assists are, and what turnovers are.

The Ideal Learning Enviornment

When I think about what local means to me as a pre-service teacher, many things came to mind. Many places like John Carroll's campus, Lake Erie, Quicken Loans Arena, and the big city and all its surrounding suburbs. The one thing that all of these things have in common, Cleveland. As you may know I was born in Florida, but I have lived in Northeastern Ohio all of my life, so only being an hour away it has been easy to relate to Cleveland. Many major sports figures or even their fans usually dislike Cleveland because it is not one of your gigantic cities. But I feel that to truly respect and I believe in the city you have to be close to for a little while. One of the reasons as to why I enjoy Cleveland and all of Northeastern Ohio is because of Lake Erie, now obviously everyone knows about it once being the "Dead Lake" but it has come a long way. While Lake Erie still may not be the cleanest water you'll find, things have certainly improved greatly. Any day you can go to one of the multiple beaches and see numerous people sitting and relaxing underneath the summer sun. There are numerous things that can be learned from our natural fresh water source. I would extremely support learning about ecosystems and other scientific things through the use of Lake Erie. The possibilities are endless for the things that students could learn through thoroughly studying our fresh ware source.