Hair facts

Marthapetrou80@gmail.com 23 Nov 2016

LESSONS IN DIGITAL LITERACY

50 FACTS ABOUT HAIR

By Nik Peachey

Marthapetrou80@gmail.com 23 Nov 2016

LESSONS IN DIGITAL LITERACY

50 FACTS ABOUT HAIR This lesson is based on an infographic about hair.

In the lesson students will learn some amazing facts about hair and the historical significance it has had in different cultures around the world.

They will also learn to challenge and question the accuracy of information they find online.

By Nik Peachey

Marthapetrou80@gmail.com 23 Nov 2016

LESSONS IN DIGITAL LITERACY

50 FACTS ABOUT HAIR

By Nik Peachey

50 FACTS ABOUT HAIR

INTRODUCTION In this lesson students will learn some amazing facts about hair and the historical significance it has had in different cultures around the world. They will also learn to challenge and question the accuracy of information they find online and how to carry out their own research into facts about skin and create their own infographic.

Aims: • To develop students’ conversation skills.

• To develop students’ abilities to think critically about online information.

• To develop students’ abilities to read and understand visual information.

• To develop students’ abilities to check the credibility of online information.

• To develop students’ abilities to carry out online research and to represent their findings visually.

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LESSON PLAN Resources • Printable PDF copies of the worksheets can be found at: http://goo.gl/fhY3sq • The infographic can be accessed at: http:// tinyurl.com/gmbbalw or by clicking or scanning the QR code.

How to use this plan The materials in this plan can be used in different ways. The first four tasks can be used independently as a simple reading and discussion class.

The last three tasks are research tasks. These are the tasks that push students to develop their digital literacies most. It’s not necessary to use all the tasks. These tasks are likely to take longer and could be set as homework, independent study tasks or as projects and followed up in the classroom. The research tasks will all require internet access.

This lesson contains seven tasks: • A discussion task which gets students thinking around the topic.

• A reading task which develops students’ abilities to use text to check information.

• A reading task which encourages students to develop deeper comprehension.

• A discussion task which gives students the opportunity to formulate a personal response to the information they have studied.

• An online research task which guides students through the process of researching and corroborating the credibility of online information.

• An online research task which guides students through the process of creating research and disseminating the results.

• A research task which develops students’ abilities to use social media to carry out research.

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Discussion task - You and hair

Reading task - Is it true?

• The aim of this task is to get students thinking about the topic and accessing and sharing their existing knowledge and opinions.

• The aim of this task is to develop students’ ability to read and scan text to check specific information.

Start the lesson by putting the students into pairs or groups

Give the students the sentences and get them to try to predict which ones are true.

Give them the discussion questions and get them to ask and answer them in their groups.

Then give them a link to the infographic.

Once they have finished talking about the topic you may want to do a brief plenary session with the whole group to give them the chance to share as a group.

Ask them to study the graphic and check their predictions.

Once the students have had some time to work alone, get them to compare and share their answers in groups.

Have a short plenary session to clarify and confirm the answers.

Discussion task - You and hair

Reading task - Is it true?

Ask and answer these questions.

Read the infographic and find out which facts are true.

1. How much time and effort each day do you spend on your hair?

2. How would you like to change your hair?

3. How do you think your hair influences the way people see you and what they think of you?

4. How do you feel about men with facial hair?

How much is too much?

5. Are you more or less attracted to people because of their hair? What factors effect your attraction?

1. Hair can be used to clean up oil spills.

2. On average each person produces 16 miles of hair each year.

3. 13% of women in Scotland have red hair.

4. Blonde hair is more expensive than other hair colors.

5. Hair is made of more than 5 elements including sulphur.

6. You can identify from a single hair whether the owner is a woman or a man.

7. The man with the longest hair lives in Vietnam.

8. On average women spend 7 months of their lives styling their hair by the time they are 65.

9. There was a beard tax in Russia in 1705.

10.The ancient greeks believed people with red hair were vampires.

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Answers

Discussion task - Your response

1. True 2. False - 10 miles / 16 Kilometers 3. False 13% of the population. Not only women.

4. True 5. True 6. False - Gender cannot be determined from hair.

7. False - He did live in Vietnam but he died in 2010.

8. True 9. True 10. True

• The aim of this task is to encourage a more personal and critical response to the information students have been studying.

Put the students in small groups to discuss their responses to the questions.

When the students have discussed the questions in their groups you may want to have a short class plenary.

Discussion task - Your response

Reading task - Insane facts

Ask and answer these questions.

• The aim of this activity is to encourage the students to explore the information in the infographic in more depth and to build a more personal connection.

1. Which of the facts do you feel are least likely to be true?

Tell the students that there are many more statistics in the graphic.

3. Which of the facts would you like to share with a friend / family member? Who? Why?

Get the students to read through the infographic again and find facts that surprise them.

4. Why do you think society has such a positive attitude to blonde hair?

Once the students have had the opportunity to study the graphic put them into groups to share the facts they found most surprising.

5. Why do you think society has such a negative attitude towards body hair?

Reading task - Insane facts The infographic is in 5 sections: • Facts • Insane facts about hair color • Insane facts about hair biology • Insane facts about hair beauty

2. Which of the facts do you think may have changed?

6. Most men fear going bald. Why do you think this is?

7. Which of the facts have changed the way you see yourself/society?

8. How many of the facts do you think you will still remember next week?

9. Which of the facts would you like to remember?

• Insane facts about hair history Look through each section and choose what you think is the most surprising fact from each section.

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Research task - Fact checking

Research task - Fact checking

• The aim of this activity is to develop students’ abilities to check the authenticity and credibility of information they find online and to develop their ability to reference the sources of online content they find.

Choose 5 of the facts and research them to see if they really are true.

Ask the students if they think the information in the infographic is all true?

See if there is any information that they doubt.

Ask them why they doubt or believe the information.

Tell them to do some research and to see if they can corroborate the information.

Try to find 3 sources which either support or contradict the facts.

Be sure to make notes about the sources you use: Include: • URL • Name of author or organization/publisher • Publication date • Type of publication • Your assessment of the source credibility

Ask them to choose five facts to check.

Tell them to check the facts in two ways.

• Firstly they should check the sources of the information quoted in the infographic itself and see if they really exist.

• Secondly they should use a search engine to try to find other sources which either support or contradict the information in the infographic.

Ask them to try to find at least two additional sources that either contradict or support the information.

Tell them to make sure they take notes of the sources and the information they find. Make sure that they know how to record the information sources (URL, name of publication, author’s name, date, etc.)

Once they have completed their research you could conduct a plenary session and get the students to present what they have found and try to decide whether the information in the graphic is reliable and true or not.

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Research task - Skin facts • The aim of this task is to develop students’ abilities to find information and disseminate the information in a visual form.

Tell the students they are going to do some research into skin.

Ask them to use a search engine and try to find up to ten similar facts about skin.

Tell them to be sure to write down the sources of the information they find.

Once they have the ten facts, ask them to create an infographic to show their results.

Once they have created their infographics ask the students to share them and look at each others’ graphics and find the ten facts that most surprised them.

Research task - Skin facts Do some research into skin facts and see if you can find similar information.

Find 10 facts.

Be sure to make notes about the sources you use: Include: • URL • Name of author or organization/publisher • Publication date

Social media task - Questioning your friends • The aim of this task is to develop students’ abilities to create and carry out online research.

Ask the students to look at the infographic again and to create a questionnaire with ten questions.

Tell them they can choose to make it a quiz type questionnaire to find out how much people know about hair or they can make it a research type questionnaire to find people’s opinions.

Use the two question types as examples.

Get the students to write the questions and answer choices. Once they have completed them they can create an online questionnaire using one of these tools: • http://www.typeform.com/ • https://www.surveymonkey.com/ Once they have created the questionnaire ask the students to share it with their social media contacts.

Give the students a week or two to collect results. Once they have all the results of the questionnaire ask them to create an infographic to display their results.

They can use one of these tools to create the infographic:

• Type of publication

• https://www.canva.com/

• Your assessment of the source credibility

• https://www.draw.io/

Use the research to produce your own infographic.

Remember to include the sources of the information at the end.

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Social media task - Questioning your friends

Copyright © Nik Peachey

Create your own questionnaire with 10 questions about hair.

This could be a questionnaire to check what people know about hair.

E.g.

What percentage of the Scottish population has red hair?

• 5% • 10% • 13% • 25% Or one to check their opinions and preferences.

Which hair color would you prefer to have?

• Black • Red • Brown • Blonde Use one of these tools to create your questionnaire: • http://www.typeform.com/ • https://www.surveymonkey.com/ Share the questionnaire with your social media contacts.

One you have collected the answers create an infographic to share your findings.

Use one of these tools to create your infographic: • https://www.canva.com/ • https://www.draw.io/

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