Creating and Using Scavenger Hunts for Information Literacy

1. Creating and Using Scavenger Hunts for Information Literacy By Nina Jackson Franklin Classical Middle School and TincherPrepratoryK-8 National Board Certified njackson@lbschools.net

2. Purpose • Building background knowledge to prepare students for new unit of instruction

3. Beginnings • Hatchet, created with Literacy Coach

4. Other Units • Freak the Mighty • Buddhism/Hinduism • Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry • The Giver • Anne Frank • Vietnam • Stepping on the Cracks

5. Process • Teacher tells me they want to create a Scavenger Hunt to prepare their students for a particular unit. • We discuss which topics or areas they want covered at each station. • I find the resources and create the questions. • The Classroom Teacher reviews the questions and helps me revise it to suit their particular needs.

6. Video

7. Hints and Tips • Have the materials at the station. • Either mark the page with a post-it or copy the page. • Give them clues. The focus is on enabling them to find the information, not on the process of getting information. • Have the students leave their backpacks and notebooks in one spot.

8. Hints and Tips • When possible, make the station longer than most students will have time for; it is all right if they don’t finish. • There can be 4, 6, or 8 stations, depending on the needs of the classroom teacher and the materials. • (Re)Create it to meet the needs of your library.

9. Examples

10. Wikis • Kathy Alexander, another Teacher Librarian in Long Beach USD, is in a high technology school. She took two of my Scavenger Hunts and recreated them in a Wiki format.

11. Conversion to Wiki • Hatchet • http://hcms-hatchet.wikispaces.com/ • Roll of Thunder • http://roll-of-thunder.wikispaces.com/ • She looked broadly at the Scavenger Hunt to decide what kind of information the students were being asked to find. • She then found the same kind of information in online sources she could link the students to.

12. Conversion to Wiki • She also tried to include images on every page to make it visually interesting and captivating.  • She then put together the accompanying worksheet, which she posted on the wiki to make it readily available. 

13. Differentiation • To accommodate a teacher with both accelerated and RSP classes, she created two versions of the Scavenger Hunt for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. http://roll-of-thunder-d.wikispaces.com/ • She turned the articles into PDFs, and then used Adobe to put “hints” on them. • One problem she ran into was that the students were sometimes unclear about when they were being asked for their own thoughts on a question vs. finding the information in the text.

14. Common Core • Students are being asked to engage with text (primarily non-fiction) that is often at grade level and answer questions that are dependent on the text. • Students are being asked to view pictures, video, or other media and weigh in on what it adds to the information being sought. • Students are using multiple sources to gather information.