Transcript

Teacher:  A way to develop oral language in your classroom is to have a mystery bag. This is a great alternative to show and tell.  In first grade, I give them a sheet of paper that has five clues, in which the star of the week must fill out.  They take it home with them, and they fill it out with the help of a parent or by themselves depending on their writing ability.  The first clue is, "The shape of my object is a blank, " "The color of my object is a blank," "Blank gave me my object," or "I made my object," and finally, "My object is special to me because..."Im going to go through an example of a student who filled this out and brought in an object, which is in this bag.  Usually this happens at carpet time, and you can make this really creative in which they pretend to put their detective hats on, and you give clue by clue in which students will guess what the object is.  So, the first clue is, "The shape of my object is a circle." And you ask for guesses.  The second clue, "The color of my object is gold." The third clue, "Mommy gave me my object, or, I made my object," in which she had said "no".  And finally, "My object is special to me because my mommy gave it to me."  So you take your clues, and finally you shake it around.  You ask the children, is it heavy or is it light?  And if the students still havent guessed it, the teacher can look in and maybe give another clue.  And finally, we pull out the object, and its a necklace.  The children have a great deal of fun doing this activity. 

Related References