Mystery suitcase

Suitcase teachers notes (26 KB)
Suitcase resources (80 KB)
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A useful starter for September
This lesson could be used to introduce any topic.

The author used it as the first lesson in a term's course on Invaders and Settlers, for a class of 32 year 5 and 6 mixed age and gender pupils.

Jon Nichol says: "We decided to introduce the course through the medium of a History Mystery. These always grip and enthuse the children, so we modified an old favourite: investigating clues about a child, in the form of a mystery suitcase of her possessions. This introduces skills, processes, and the concept of evidence in all its richness, using manuscript and printed sources, and artefacts in a multiplicity of forms. The children would work on the suitcase as detectives, trying to reconstruct information about the child from the evidence.

We were determined to treat history in the round, covering not only oracy, but visual and written literacy too. The latter took the form of two different genres: non-fiction reports and short stories.

by Jon Nichol; edited by Jacqui Dean