The Mystery Bag!

Today, Dr. Smirnova had us guess what was in the closed paper bag. She referred to is as "The Mystery Bag."At first I wasn't sure what the point of this activity was, but then she started discussing hypotheses. We talked about how the reason that she did this was not only to open the lesson with excitement and curiosity, but to introduce the meaning "hypothesis" by having us make a hypothesis--even we may not realize that's what we are doing! This is what she wants us to do with our future students. I really liked this idea, it engaged the whole entire class because we were all guessing different things that may have been in the bag. We listened to it by shaking it, and squished the bag all around to feel everything in it. She had us write down what we though it was, and that's our hypothesis! By using our senses to guess something, you are making an educated guess. What a great lesson opener!