Middle School Classroom Mystery II
- PDF
What educators are saying
Description
Engage your students in a murder mystery game in the classroom!
I use this lesson before starting my mystery unit and the students love it. They enjoy taking on the roles of the characters, and they enjoy the competition and challenge of trying to find the vandal.
*This is not a sequel to the first one though I kept the same teacher and map. All new characters and your students do not need to complete the first to understand what is happening with this one.
**New: I've used gender-neutral names (as best I could though I know it's subject what is neutral and what is not) and have used they/them pronouns for all students.
This product includes:
-An introduction sheet with the background of the incident: a student's journal was taken and pages were taped to the classroom walls while the students were at an assembly. All of the suspects (your students) are in the classroom. They start their own investigation into who vandalized the student's artwork.
-17 character cards that detail how each character knows the victim, where they were during the incident, and any other pertinent information (including lots of red herrings). This activity works best with class sizes of 15-17 students, but can accommodate up to 34 if you run two mysteries at once or have two students per character. There are also four characters who can be removed from the set and the story will still make sense so it can be used with a class size of down to 11 students.
-A copy of the school map so students can keep track of who was where when the incident occurred.
-A notes sheet to detail the different characters, motives, and alibis. I include a sample answer key of the notes sheet so teachers can quickly reference different characters and check student understanding.
-An assessment sheet. Students must detail a few characters who are innocent, a red herring, and of course who the vandal is. For each they need to explain what clues support their answer.
An engaging way to focus on inferences, characterization, and motive!
***I do not yet have a digital version or alternate version of this mystery. It's been a bit rough on the teaching front ... Hoping to get digital and alternate resources up soon.
