Webquests can be great lessons, but sometimes can be frustrating for beginning and intermediate English Language Learners who have to wade through a lot of words and information to find what they are looking for.  This is especially a problem when teachers borrow Webquests   “off-the-shelf” that have not been designed for English Language Learners.

Citebite is a new online tool that allows you to highlight specific areas of online text and then gives you a specific url linking to what you’ve highlighted.  For example, instead of asking my students to find answers to some questions by reading an entire New York Times article on how immigrants can protect themselves from fraud (which I did last week), I can now highlight specific parts of the article for my high-beginners and early intermediate students to link to.  I could have my more advanced students still link to the entire article without the highlighted parts.  It’s a excellent tool for differentiated instruction.

The link to this tool is under the Webquests section of my Teachers Page, which also has links to many examples of already existing Webquests that, with the help of Citebite, could be made accessible to English Language Learners.