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Unexplained Mysteries | |
(Grades 4 - 8)
Activity List
The following is a list of activities designed to provide teachers with a comprehensive, standards-aligned, literacy & technology-infused curriculum for this unit. Feel free to add your own elements, skip activities, or modify the unit to work best for you and your students.
Intended Learning
Ever wonder why airplanes and ships disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle or whether or not there really is a Bigfoot? With this unit your students will become detectives of the unexplained mysteries from nature, space, the past and the present. They will use books and the Internet for research. They will demonstrate why the mystery is hard to explain and the facts that support or refute its authenticity. Once they have ‘solved’ their mystery, they will act as Mythbusters. Students will describe why people believe the phenomenon or mysterious event to be real and will present their reasoned judgment of the “true explanation” in a brochure, Power Point, or video/audio format, which can then be loaded onto a new wiki web site. The wiki web site will also be available via the internet to the class, parents, and the world.
Unit Activities
- Introducing the Unit
- Pre-assessment
- The Unmuseum Tour - Generate “Big Questions” to guide research
- Keywords, or ‘Trash and Treasure’
- Note-taking
- Evaluating a Web Site
- Documenting Research – Creating a Bibliography
- Rubric to Assess Unit
- Fact vs. Opinion
- Brochure
- Power Point Slide Show
- Movie
- Wiki with student projects posted
All the lessons in this unit are designed to provide you with content and strategies to implement the activities. Please feel free to use your professional discretion as to sequence and content.