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.

Marthapetrou80@gmail.com 23 Nov 2016

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. Its 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.

Marthapetrou80@gmail.com 23 Nov 2016

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.

Marthapetrou80@gmail.com 23 Nov 2016

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.
5

Marthapetrou80@gmail.com 23 Nov 2016

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, authors
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.
6

Marthapetrou80@gmail.com 23 Nov 2016

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 peoples 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.

Marthapetrou80@gmail.com 23 Nov 2016

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/