Artifact Bag Project

One of the more interesting projects that I had to accomplish during this semester, was the artifact bag project.  For this project, teachers first need to decide on a topic, for my artifact bag, we were doing a unit on fracking, so i decided to stick with this topic.  Next, teachers need to then figure out what items to use in the artifact bag.  These items need to not directly speak about what the topic is, but provide a hint to the students so as it does not give the topic away right out of the gate.  This is the hardest part of the project, as you have to not only come up with one item, but at the very least three to five items so as to make students explore the topic more.  For my artifact bag on fracking, I used four items: a bottle of water with dirt in it, another bottle of water that was labeled flammable, a small lego drill bit (as opposed to a real drill, safety first), and an inhaler.  These items all symbolized the health risks that occur when there is fracking in your area.  You'll also notice that none of these items on their own give away the topic of fracking, however when you look over all of the items, you notice a connection between them.


For the actual activity, students are to examine each item and figure out the who, what, when, where, and why this item is in the bag.  Most students don't pick up on it after looking at the first item, as the first item could be anything, however, usually by the third item, students figure out what the correlation is between all of the items.

To record all of the information, an information chart is usually passed out to each one of the students.  On this, they answer all of the questions, and also provide predictions and insights before the start of the activity, as to what they think all of the items could be.  Before starting the activity, you are going to want to put students into groups of four or five, depending on the size of your class, naturally pairing students accordingly.

For the demo lesson in which I made this artifact bag, the students seemed to really like it.  It allows students to explore with all of their senses, by touching and feeling objects that they may have never seen before, and are quite curious about.  Once I get my own classroom of students, I plan of trying the artifact bag project, hoping those students are just as excited about it, as these students were during the demo lesson.