Why Students Love a Murder Mystery
Murder mysteries are one of my students’ favorite activities. By far I get more requests for this type of activity than any other I do. It is for good reason students ask for this. It is interactive, competitive and 100% in the target language. It is also perfect for Halloween.
Why Teachers Love a Murder Mystery
Teachers love this activity because it allows students to practice all modes of communication. Students must communicate with each other to solve the crime. Receptive skills are practiced through the viewing of videos. Higher-level thinking has to come into play in order to solve the murder. The list of skills goes on and on.
How to Start…
Write or Find a Plot
I like to write my mysteries and use the names of students in a particular class. They like to become part of the story. I Sometimes use more than one murderer. This makes it a bit more difficult to solve and it also doesn’t leave one student as “the bad guy.” Once my story is written out, I choose my characters at random by drawing names. If you don’t want to really use a murder, you can make it an injury where the victim is in a coma so the case must be solved without him or her.
I always choose a high school setting because that is what my students are most familiar with and can relate to. I also like to throw in some Deaf culture if possible by using names of famous deaf people, schools, or organizations in my story. My holiday stories don’t tend to do this. I just tell a story using vocabulary from the holiday theme.
Not a Traditional Murder Mystery
Unlike some murder mystery games, I don’t give characters for students to act out. Instead, I record clues to the crime in short video clips. Any mystery can have anywhere from 25 – 100 video clues. I place students in groups of 3 – 5 and give them a worksheet with the character’s names on it. Students can record the clues they learn about on the document.
Developing Characters
Depending on the story you choose, you should have several characters. Often it is around 6 – 15 in any given story. A few more or a few less would be fine depending on how long you want the activity to last. When creating the characters you always throw in a clue or two that has nothing to do with the murder mystery to throw the little detectives off their track. After all, you don’t want this solved in 2 minutes. You want to force students to talk to each other about the clues and share their opinions. Providing the wrong information that leads the detectives down the wrong path is a good thing.
Provide Clues
To really get into it, provide clues around the room. Plant some evidence place images of blood in the area the crime took place. You can also provide a map with images of the crime scene (harmless images no dead bodies). A map of the area the crime took place can help visual learners solve the crime faster.
To Play
I place students in even groups and give each student an envelope containing a specific number of clues. For example, if I have groups of 4 and 40 clues, I place 10 shortened URL links or QR coded in an envelope. Each student in the group of 4 will have 10 clues to sort through. They must watch, take notes and share with their team. They are not allowed to share their clues on paper, only in the target language. That is how the collaboration and communication come together. I also don’t allow them to share the QR code containing the actual clue.
Once teams think they can solve the crime, they come to me and give me their guesses. I tell them yes or no and if they are right or wrong. If they only solve half of the mystery, I tell them they have partial correct, but don’t tell them which parts are right or wrong. If they are really struggling, and class is coming to an end, I start to tell them which guesses are accurate.
Ideas For Use
This is a great activity to take a break from your textbook or to leave as a sub-day activity. Be advised, it takes a lot of time to put together if you are starting from scratch. However, once it is together, you will have it to use year after year.
Halloween
Halloween is a great time to host a murder mystery in your classroom. Here is how I just conducted Murder at Monster Manor. I cut out the English clue strips. I gave 1 – 2 strips to students in my ASL 3/4 combo class. There are 41 clues and I have 34 students. Some students got 1 clue, others received 2. I had students use their Chromebooks in class and record their clue in ASL. Then they made a shortened URL and a QR code and sent it to me with the number of the clue they recorded. I placed this information into the grids on the worksheet.
Secondly, I cut the English strips off the URL and QR code section. I split the kids into even groups and give each student
Make your own story or use this fun, Halloween Murder Mystery already created for you.
You may want to try a digital Halloween breakout. Learn more about the digital breakout here.
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