Treasure Hunt

Objective: Give students practice in:

locating information and ideas in texts;
taking notes;
working cooperatively in small groups.

Part #1: Hand out the November issue of New Youth Connections. Split your group into smaller ones. Tell them to open up to pages 22-23. Tell them each group will have five minutes to read the stories on those pages (except the one titled “Solar Shut Down”).

NOTE: The short time limits in reading the articles and looking for the information should be a hint to each group that they have divide up the tasks among them, for example, each member should read a different story. You can suggest they do this but it might be more instructive to let them figure it out for themselves.

Then tell them you are going to read ten questions aloud, one after the other. After the tenth question, each group will have 5 minutes to locate the answers to all the questions and make a note about its location. You will then ask each question again to see which groups found the answers.

Here are the questions:

a) Which writer seems most addicted to his or her gadget?
b) Which story involved a class flirtation?
c) Who stayed a “little unplugged” after the experiment ended?
d) Who blundered into a new form of expression?
e) How many people read books?
f) Who made the biggest sacrifice?
g) Who relies most on his or her gadget to get through the day?
h) Who watched TV to fight boredom?
i) Who played a sport?
j) Who got out of doing school work because of being unplugged?

Discussion idea: After you go over the answers, ask each group if they divided up the work in any way. For example, did each person in Group A read one story or did everyone try to read all the stories? Did everyone take notes about while you were reading the questions or did one person take notes while the others in the group continued to read the stories?

Answers to questions:

a) Jordan Temple
b) “No Phone, No Fun”
c) Chantel Morel
d) Marco Salazar
e) Two (Chantel Morel and Conor Dawson)
f) Depends. Let them argue a little.
g) Probably Christina Gee
h) Conor Dawson and Marco Salazar
i) Conor Dawson
j) Conor Dawson

Thought experiment

Have your group read the “Don’t iTune Out,” “Offline, Off-Kilter,” and “No Phone, No Fun.” Ask them to imagine living for 5 days without one of these: an iPod, internet access or a cell phone. How would their lives change? What could be the worst moment? What would they do instead? They can email responses to us at nycmail@youthcomm.org or use snail mail to Youth Communication, 224 West 29th St. 2nd Floor, NYC, 10001.