I know you've seen the classrooms on Instagram that completely transform their classroom into a crime scene and black out all their walls with garbage bags. I love those rooms. I wish I could be those rooms. But, here's the thing: I don't think I could handle that.
Now - I am here to say that I love my kids. I really do. And, I would do absolutely anything it if would help them learn. But, I am a terrible actor for classroom scenarios. I usually begin pretty well (cc: Elf on the Shelf and Quiet Critters), but I always have a difficult time keeping it up. When our "magic apple" broke that gave one child the power to pick up a quiet critter, I definitely didn't panic enough leading them all to doubt the real magical abilities of quiet critters (okay, they were probably doubting it before but...). So, I knew that pretending there was a murder or giant crime scene was out of the question. No way could I pretend for that long.
And, so this project was born.
First, I did a little classroom prep.
I have 21 students so I broke them up into 7 groups. This worked well for some of my kiddos that leave my room throughout the day so no one was left working alone.
To break them up into their groups, I taped a number somewhere on their desk for them to locate. Obviously, as their first mission as agents, it couldn't be an easy challenge.
They first had to decode their group. I really didn't tell them much except to find your group. I had some very confused faces, but most people found their number really quickly which sent my confused kiddos searching their desk for their number. Then, they had to tell me what group they were in. You'd be surprised at how many kiddos told me so confidently that they were in the "ruh foe" group (rfou --> four) or the "neo" group. Once the first few figured out they were numbers, most figured it out pretty quickly after that.
After they figured out their team, they all met up at their numbers.
Unfortunately, their team spot had no clues. So, they had to find their magnifying glass hidden at their center and find their packet.
The team numbers were written pretty small. Some kids could still read it, but a lot needed the magnifying glass to figure it out. My goal was the have them all use a magnifying glass, but I didn't know how big size 6 font would be. And, once I'd made that long walk to the copier...I made it work.
After this fun, we got to the meat of the activity. This is also the first time I gave my kids any real instructions. Yes, they got through all the other parts through a process of elimination and looking at what others were doing!
Instead of a crime scene or mystery, I had my kids solve riddles. My kids also love jokes so this was right up their alley.
My kids had 4 review items (two task cards and two worksheets) to complete so I broke up the answers into 4 clue cards. Some had jumbled words or I broke up a word into different letters to add in a little extra challenge. At the end of each question/task card, they checked in with me. I was also walking around the whole time and meeting with all my groups to correct an errors early on. If all their answers were correct, they received a clue. I jumbled up some of the words on the clue if it was a sentence. If it was one word, I just broke up the word. My kids are in third so the jumbled words worked well for them. If you have younger kiddos, you could probably just break up the words.
Now, if we weren't listening to directions or started being too bossy with our team, our team received a negative. I was very clear about these negatives before we began so they knew they would be coming. My negatives really just meant I cut up one of your clues - some more than others mainly just depending on how many negatives a team had gotten. You can also see on the "bark" written on the top that it got cut up a little bit more. If you have younger kiddos, your negatives could definitely just be cutting up parts of a word that wasn't jumbled.
I also waited until halfway through when some of my kids started getting tired of working or started getting a little *too* bossy with our friends to add a little roadblock.
We lost power.
Yep, I closed the curtains and cut off all the lights. A few of my groups just stared around the room saying, "Well, I can't read the words now!"
And, then the first group found their flashlight hidden around their group.
What was so great about all of this was how much my kids started noticing their surroundings. I tell them thousands of times a day, "Take in your surroundings! What are the other kids doing?" Then today, I finally saw them utilizing that! This also added in a new positive element. If you were working well as a team or answered a few questions within a worksheet correctly, I rewarded their teams with another flashlight.
A few suggestions: I wouldn't put all of their clue packets in the same place. A lot of my groups just met up at their clue packets so I had three groups crowded on the carpet and had to send them back to their task cards. You definitely could give them more instructions when they first began, but I really enjoyed the explorer element to the start of our activity. It definitely added a little more time to the start, but I enjoyed seeing my kids problem solving strategies in use.
Final conclusions: I loved this activity. It really let me have individual time with each students on the skills we were working on. It really got my kids talking with their partners about topics. I definitely plan on repeating, but what I loved most was how easy it would be to incorporate this activity into another reading unit or math lesson. Also, it really amused me how much more interested my kids were in reading when they got to do it with a flashlight and with a magnifying glass. 10/10 would recommend.
Interested in trying this in your classroom? Download a copy of my clues and riddles here.
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