I recently posted about some of the activities I used to teach my class about inferences. I’m continuing the post today with one more activity from my inferencing bag of tricks.
Evidence Bags Our final “fun” activity was to look at some evidence bags I had collected. Once again this was some trash I found around my house but I didn’t tell them that. The trash was stored in resealable bags so that it looked like real evidence.
In this case, we didn’t have much evidence to look at but we ended up spending a lot of time analyzing it! I wanted the kids to tell me whose trash this was and what was wrong with them. There isn’t enough evidence here for them to figure out an exact person but I wanted them to be able to tell me whether it was a child or an adult. It’s obvious that this person was sick but I wanted a more specific description. What kind of illness did this person have? I started with the cough drops and then moved on to the cough syrup. At this point they had a good idea about the illness but were stumped on whether it was a child or an adult. They really got stumped with the Sudafed but one of my bright kids suggested we look at the dosing instructions to find out what age this medicine is intended for. Each kid had their own chart to fill in as we went.
This is my second evidence bag. I told the class that I found this trash at the ball park in town. Once again, I wanted them to figure out who (child or adult; male or female) and what might have happened.
My class was uber involved in these inference activities. They even wanted to help make more evidence bags so that we could do the activity again. I’m hoping that next year I’ll have some more bags put together so that the kids can work on them in small groups. I’m going to be on the look-out for some interesting trash and may even go dumpster diving to get it! It’s for a good cause, right?
Before I go, I want to share this picture I found on Pinterest. We recently studied our solar system and this is the reaction some of our lovelies had. I love the look on that cat’s face!!
Evidence Bags Our final “fun” activity was to look at some evidence bags I had collected. Once again this was some trash I found around my house but I didn’t tell them that. The trash was stored in resealable bags so that it looked like real evidence.
In this case, we didn’t have much evidence to look at but we ended up spending a lot of time analyzing it! I wanted the kids to tell me whose trash this was and what was wrong with them. There isn’t enough evidence here for them to figure out an exact person but I wanted them to be able to tell me whether it was a child or an adult. It’s obvious that this person was sick but I wanted a more specific description. What kind of illness did this person have? I started with the cough drops and then moved on to the cough syrup. At this point they had a good idea about the illness but were stumped on whether it was a child or an adult. They really got stumped with the Sudafed but one of my bright kids suggested we look at the dosing instructions to find out what age this medicine is intended for. Each kid had their own chart to fill in as we went.
This is my second evidence bag. I told the class that I found this trash at the ball park in town. Once again, I wanted them to figure out who (child or adult; male or female) and what might have happened.
My class was uber involved in these inference activities. They even wanted to help make more evidence bags so that we could do the activity again. I’m hoping that next year I’ll have some more bags put together so that the kids can work on them in small groups. I’m going to be on the look-out for some interesting trash and may even go dumpster diving to get it! It’s for a good cause, right?
Before I go, I want to share this picture I found on Pinterest. We recently studied our solar system and this is the reaction some of our lovelies had. I love the look on that cat’s face!!
