Year 6 taking notes at the 'crime scene' and interviewing Miss Jess this week
Our Learning Assistants came rushing into our classrooms on Monday morning to ask if we’d heard what had happened.
After making the children promise to not touch anything (so as not to contaminate the evidence) we went down to the kitchen to take photographs and make notes on the clues and evidence. Our young detectives then formulated their own theories as to what happened and started identifying possible suspects.
A big part of solving the mystery was the interview they conducted with an eye-witness: Miss Jess. They asked her all sorts of questions to discover more clues and help them eliminate and identify further lines of enquiry. It was very useful in helping them solve the puzzle.
The children had all sorts of ideas about who could have caused the chaos in the kitchen, but in the end it was revealed that it was Mr Kelly! He had caused the mess by accident when he burnt his hand making himself a cup of coffee on Saturday. He went to the hospital and completely forgot to go back and clear it up!
Once the mystery was solved, the children were able to use the experience to write their own mystery stories which they are working on at the moment. This sort of activity is a great way to create a stimulus for the children to get them excited about writing their story and give them a lot of things to think about as they’re writing.
And don’t worry – Mr Kelly is ok!
- Cheryl Deckker, Year 6 Class Teacher