Collaborate to solve a school problem | Become the School Librarian Team | 3-5, 6-8, 9-12

Instructions

Materials Needed:

• Interview Template
• Problem Statement Scaffold Document
• Student accounts for Miro Board (digital board)
• A computer for each student, each pairs of students, or group of 3-4 students

Step 1: “What makes you want to check a book out?”

• Think-Pair-Share:
  • “What makes you want to check a book out?
  • Why or why don’t you check one out?
  • What stops you from checking out a book?”

Step 2: Introduce Question that Students Will Collaborate to Answer

• Introduce the scenario for students:
  • “You are a member of the School Librarian Team.
  • They ask themselves, ‘How can we get students to check out more books and read more?”
  • They realize they don’t know why students do or do not check out books to read
    • Is it because students don’t know they can check out books?
    • Is it because students don’t know how to check out books?
    • Is it because students don’t know how to find a good book?
  • Your job:
    • Find out how students decide to check out a book–and why they do or don’t?  What’s their problem?
• introduce the process of understanding a problem:
  • Step 1: Collect Data by Interviewing Peers using Interview Template to Collect Data
  • Step 2: Synthesize Findings
  • Step 3: Find Themes and Reasons
  • Step 4: Write out a Problem Statement

Step 3: Have Students Develop Interview Questions to Interview Peers

• Introduce the Interview Template from the Design Thinking Toolkit
  • Have students review the basic template
  • Have them generate additional questions or edit existing questions in the template
  • Have students list out the different friends they want to interview during recess, during lunch, or after school

Step 4: Have Students Collect Data by Interviewing Peers using Interview Template to Collect Data

• Provide students the time to interview other students (can be in class, or team up with another classroom across different grades and subjects)
• Ensure students know that they should:
  • Interview students 2 on 1, where for each interview:
  • 1 student interviews the interviewee
  • 1 student takes notes on the interview

Step 5: Have Students Synthesize Findings using a Digital Board

• Go over the steps students take for synthesizing information (model and provide practice)
  • Using Miro Board, from each interview (model and provide practice):
    • Type key sentences and phrases from interviews onto digital sticky notes

Step 6: Have Students Find Themes and Reasons

• Have Students:
  • Clump together related sticky notes or phrases into thematic groups
  • Create names for those groups (can be a name or phrase)
• SCAFFOLDING Suggestion for this section:
  • Have students create categories:
    • Reasons why I don’t check out a book
    • Reasons why I do check out a book
    • Feelings associated with the school library

Step 7: Have Students Write a Problem Statement

• Using the data from Step 6, have students use the Problem Statement Scaffold Document to articulate the problem statement
• Once students have articulated a clear initial problem statement draft:
  • Have students come up with more questions they’d like to ask students again to ensure their problem is true

Step 8: Have Students Interview Again!