Non-Fiction Scavenger Hunt

In the past few library lessons, I've been refreshing the students' knowledge of our Non-Fiction section. This has worked great with Year 7s who, in my experience, come to High School with little to no research experience.

Instead of giving them topics to explore I've turned it into a type of scavenger hunt.

I put a bunch of non-fiction topics in a jar, which I've dubbed The Jar of Knowledge. The topics were things like "Snakes" "The Human Skeleton" "Airplanes" and also famous people like Shakespeare and Nelson Mandela.

 

 

I then put the class into groups of 5. They elect one member of their team to approach The Jar of Knowledge and choose a topic. They can then choose one member of their team to assist them in finding a book related to that topic on the shelves.

 

Once they've found a book, they must return to their table and answer a series of questions on a research sheet.

 

Using the sheet they must:

 

Write down the title and author of the book

Find two interesting facts

Find the Glossary, Index & Acknowledgements page if there is one

Find three new words and write down their definitions

 

The first group to answer all of their questions is crowned the winner and is provided with chocolate and our school Vivo points.

 

Turning this into a race with prizes is a great incentive. At the end of the lesson I go from team to team, getting them to discuss their topic and their research sheet. We also discuss the importance of things like Glossaries, Indices & Acknowledgements pages.

 

The entire race takes about twenty minutes and is a great way to break up a library lesson.