The Mystery Bag?!?!?!

   On September 12th in science methods we were introduced to the mystery bag activity. Dr. Smirnova held up a bag. She asked us if the bag invoked any thoughts? And she asked us to give ideas of what we thought was in the bag. She then passed the bag around and let us feel the bag for three seconds. I guessed that it was plastic musical instruments or a dog toy. We all made informed guesses. Dr. Smirnova then told us the definition of a hypothesis. An hypothesis is a tentative explanation for the problem based on some type of observation. I always thought that an hypothesis was an educated guess. It is not an educated guess it is a tentative explanation! We then needed to devise a method to obtain more information about our hypothesis. We went with the investigation design approach. I yelled out in class to poke holes in the bag to see if we were one step closer to finding out what was in the bag. Of course we could have just opened the bag, but that would have ruined all the fun! If you were doing the mystery bag activity with a class you would have them perform several tests on the bag. For example have the students shake the bag and see what the hear. We never actually found out what was in the bag! Dr. Smirnova asked us why this activity? She then proceeded to say that this activity connected to the science principles about uncertainty. We also learned how we can teach our future students about hypotheses. At the end of the activity we went over the steps of inquiry. The first step is to formulate a question/problem. The second step is to make predictions. The third step is to investigate the steps and it allows you to evaluate the hypothesis. Step  four is to communicate the results. The mystery bag activity kept me engaged the entire lesson because I was so curious as to what was in the bag. This is definitely an activity I will be using with my future students, but I will have them create their own mystery bags.