At the beginning of a school year in middle school, it’s important to get to know your students on a deeper level than just asking what is their favorite color or favorite animal. I designed this activity for when I returned from my maternity leave two months into the school year, and it was the BEST way to get a snapshot of my new students. I will use this for Back to School every year and I want to share what I found successful about this digital brown bag biography activity!
Model with a Real Brown Bag First!
I kicked off this lesson with an actual brown bag filled with some items that represent me. In the bag I put a photo of my family, a passport holder, my favorite novel, a test tube, a crochet hook, my favorite coffee mug, an issue of Bon Appetit magazine, a photo of my grandparents’ mountain house, and a bunch of dried lavender.
I put the bag on a stool at the front of the classroom and took out each object one at a time. Then, I talked about how I love to cook and travel, how I’m learning how to crochet, how my favorite place is my grandparents’ mountain house, and how my kids are my most proud accomplishment. My students had questions about some of the things I talked about (how old are my kids? where is our mountain cabin? where is my favorite place I’ve traveled?), and they looked genuinely interested in learning more about me!
4 Items, 3Words, and an Avatar Portrait!
Next, I explained that they were going to come up with some items to place in a brown bag to help me (and the other students) get to know them. But instead of sending my middle schoolers home to hunt around their houses for items small enough to put in a paper bag, they were going to do this activity digitally!
Students to choose at least four items to put into a digital brown bag. Each item represents something about the student. They can search the internet for images and then remove the background from the images using www.photoscissors.com. The beauty of this activity is that it allows students to showcase their unique personalities, interests, and experiences in a creative way. Students can choose items such as a favorite book or music album, a sport they play or team they love, a piece of artwork they’ve created, a family tradition, a musical instrument they are learning, a picture of loved ones, or an image from a favorite place they’ve traveled.
The students also need to choose three words that their friends and family would use to describe them. I like this part because the words that students choose are quite telling about their personalities!
Lastly, students will use a website to design a fun avatar portrait of themselves. They will place this image into the picture frame on their Google Slide!
Class Gallery and Presentations
Once each student has designed his/her Brown Bag Biography slide, they will download their slide as a JPEG and insert it into the Class Gallery Google Slides. They will then type why they chose each item. This is a great time to have the students share in partners or small groups why they chose their items.
You can encourage students to share their brown bag biographies with each other, to ask questions, make connections, and to provide support and encouragement. This is when kids realize that they love the same sports teams as others in the class, they have step-siblings like other kids in the class, or they have similar best memories from elementary school. This creates a positive and inclusive classroom culture where every student feels valued and supported.
I loved hearing about what items my students chose for this digital brown bag biography activity. Their personalities shined through in such an awesome way! I actually polled each of my classes to see if they would prefer presenting their slide to the whole class or in small groups and each class voted differently.
I suggest completing the activity yourself as an example. This will set the bar! As the teacher, you can use this activity to not only get to know your students better, but also to foster a sense of community in your classroom. Through this activity, students have the opportunity to share their story and personality in a fun and engaging way. It allows them to express themselves and to feel heard and understood by their peers and their teacher. It also helps to cultivate a classroom environment that values diversity, individuality, and understanding.
You may be interested in more Back to School activity ideas in this blog post!
