Digging up Economics

As an educator, it is important to be constantly finding ways to engage students in new content being taught to them. One way of doing this is by using an artifact bag. I created an artifact bag that I would use to introduce the topic of economics. I included five "artifacts" that I thought each covered a different concept of economics. The items I included were US currency, a coupon, a shirt tag that said "made in India," and two QR codes that linked to the youtube videos below.


Having students work together in groups in order to determine what the next lesson could be engages students in the lesson. It allows for discussion about the items, as well as how they could be related to each other. Then, when the groups present what they believe the connection between all the items is, having them explain why they think each artifact was included shows their metacognition and helps the teacher understand their though process. Further, when teaching the lessons on economics (or whatever the artifact bag may be on), the artifacts in the bag can be used as examples for the different concepts or vocabulary they represented. In doing so, you're activating student's prior knowledge from the artifact bag lesson, and helping them make connections between vocabulary and a more concrete item.

Creating an artifact bag was not something I had previously thought about, but I now realize how useful it could be. The items within the bag could be made more or less difficult depending on the grade level of the students. While I would have used my artifact bag to introduce the lesson, there are also ways I could use the bag to review a topic as well. If I were using an artifact bag lesson at the end of a unit, I could include create multiple bags so each group had a different one, and then tailor the items in each bag to one specific concept covered in the unit. In doing so, it would help students review the concepts learned, as well as help me see if there were concepts the students did not fully understand, and therefore could not identify based on the artifact bag provided.