Human Library Revisited (28 Days of Writing)

Here we are in February and I am back into the Human Library project with my grade 9s.  We introduced it two weeks ago and followed that up with some activities to help students identify their "passion" or if not passion, at least some of their interests.  As with last year, the students will be a "human" book on their passions or interest.

I was not surprised that a number of the boys in my group had decided to be a book about a sport, either basketball or football.  It will be my challenge to help them find some aspect of their topic beyond their favorite team.  One boy wants his book to be on the rules of basketball.  I can't help but wonder how he will make that interesting to the readers.  We shall see.

Last week we started work on googleable and non-googleable questions with a Ted talk on a Japanese nursery school.  When I started to show it, I think I had a number of puzzled students.  What did this have to do with the Human Library?  Below is the lesson plan I created for the three classes and teachers.

1. Play your class our TED Talk.  It will hopefully lead to a provocative discussion and questions.
2. Give students plenty of post-it notes to write one question per post-it in a short period of time - maybe 10-20 minutes.
3. Ask students to post their questions onto a window or wall, under two headings: Googleable and Non-Googleable
4. Discuss what might constitute  googleable and non-googleable questions.  Ensure they understand the difference.  
5. Once they have their questions posted, share the googleable questions out for them to find the answers;
6. Give some time for students to present some or all of their answers;
7. Should there be sufficient time, examine the non-googleable questions and decide which might be most interesting to examine further (in another class)