Resources for Teaching Critical Thinking to Teens in a Juvenile Detention Center
I have recently agreed to teach information literacy and writing skills to teens at a local juvenile detention center. As a librarian at an academic university, teaching teens is a totally new prospect to me. So to help tackle this challenging prospect I reached out to the education faculty at my university as well as the Information Literacy Instruction listserv. Listed below are the awesome suggestions and resources that were recommended to me:
Suggested Activities
- Debate
- Ebonics exercise- students volunteer slang terms to research in the OED, Academic Search Complete, etc
Resources for Finding Activities
- MadLibs:
http://www.funbrain.com/brain/ReadingBrain/ReadingBrain.html
- Story Starters:
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/story-starters/
- Jeopardy (addressess antonyms, synonyms, prefixes, suffixes, etc.)
- Spelling and voc. practice: (may be too easy):
- Resources for literacy lesson plans and activities (Reading Rockets is a good source as well):
http://www.readwritethink.org/
http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/
Associations
The Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies interest groups
Articles
- Great article by Library Journal: Prison and Libraries: Public Service Inside and Out
This is just a start to the list of awesome recommendations that I have received. I will keep you updated on any additions. Also if you have any suggestions please comment below!
I’ll be very interested to follow your progress as I am an administrator in a juvenile state school.
Thank you! I would love to pick your brain sometime and hear about your experiences well. 🙂 Would you be interested in an interview?