This Topic Chooser Helper is adapted from Rob Lamb’s Topic Chooser Helper Lesson plan. A Microsoft Word format of the original is available for download to adapt for your own use.
Topic: This is the first pass on deciding your topic choice. It helps you think about how much your understand your topic and whether you can find useful data.
Time: 45 minutes
Materials:
• Laptop
• Topic Chooser Helper
Procedure:
- Choose 5 possible topics. In classrooms, the teacher may go over what makes a successful topic.
- Refine topic choices by going through the first 3 steps.
- Take the best three and search online for 3 good resources for each of them
- Choose your favorite topic and list any personal connections to the topic.
- In the classroom, the teacher will review the topic and either sign off on it or meet with the student to refine their topics or pick new topics.
- Once a topic is decided on, the next step going through the infographic benchmark to put together a plan of action.
Choose and Refine your Topic
Step 1: List 5 top topics you are interested in pursuing.
Step 2: Based on step 1, list the topics that involve science. Reframe the wording or dive into detailed questions for this step, so that you once again have a list of 5.
Step 3: Based on step 1 and 2, list the topics that can be represented visually and contain data.
Step 4: Choose three of the best topics from steps 2 and 3.
Step 5: For each of the three topics selected in step 4, find 3 online sources of information, and for each source of information (you will have 9 sources), say whether the source is credible (look up the source on Wikipedia), useful to your topic, and whether it has data.
| Source | Is it Credible? | Is it Useful? | Does it have Data? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website name, Webpage Name, Link | Yes/No/Unsure | Yes/No/Unsure | Yes/No/Unsure |
Step 6: Which one is your favorite topic? Why? Do you have a personal connection to it?
Next Steps
Once you’ve settled on a topic, start thinking about data in Data: Finding, Using, Visualizing. You can also jump ahead and start making a design plan for your infographic using the Infographic Design Plan.