3/31/22
Mystery bag is one of my favorite lesson 'hooks'. This activity taps into students' curiosity and asks them to think critically as they make predictions, inferences and draw conclusions.
How To:
Begin by putting 3 items that relate to your lesson or unit content into a bag. Pull each item from the bag one at a time. Have students work in groups to make predications about the lesson or unit, and/or to determine how each item relates to what you have been studying.
Ideas for Implementation:
At the beginning of a lesson, do the mystery bag activity and ask students to predict what the objective of the lesson will be.
After each item is revealed, have students record what the item by itself represents, reminds them of or symbolizes. Then, after all items have been revealed, ask students to explain how the items relate to one another, what they have in common, and what conclusions that causes them to draw.
After each item is revealed, have students make predictions about what the next item might be.
Instead of revealing the items all at once, reveal one item a day for the entire week to increase the suspense.
At the end of a lesson, do the mystery bag activity with items that will relate to the next lesson in the unit, and ask students to predict what the focus of the next lesson will be.
Structure an entire lesson around a mystery bag. Get 8 - 10 bags and place them around the room with one item inside of each. Have students visit the bags in small groups and make inferences about who, what, when, or where the mystery item represents. This is best done mid unit.
At the end of a unit, assign each student a person, place, event, or concept from the unit and have them create a mystery bag for their assigned content. Provide students with a list of the people, places, events or concepts assigned. Place the bags around the room at stations, and have students visit each station and infer which bag matches which thing on the list.
Have students fill bags with items that tell the class something about them. Have students present these in small groups, or choose a few bags a day to present to the entire class and have the class guess who the bag belongs to. Similarly, you can do a get to know your teacher activity this way. If you choose items that are unique and up for interpretation, you can ask students to make inferences about what each item says about you. For example, a trophy with a general design could mean many different things.