Need Ideas: Teaching Summer School: Mystery Theme?

Question

I need ideas for activities for my students. They are 3rd grade going into 4th and I can do anything having to do with the mystery theme involving reading, writing, math, whatever I want. Are there any teachers that have done lessons involving mysteries? If so, please give me details.

Answer 1

ohk well u can do like some kind of crime happened and some staff in the school os involved....... and they can interview suspects and you can give them clues with like numbrs and stuff for math

good luck

Answer 2

Check out:

www.kids-mysteries.com or

dinnerandamurder.com

They are mystery kits for kids.  You could use this as a kick off, but instead of completing it in one day, use the first week of school to work through it.  Then, when it is complete, they can do a ton of work around it:

math - how many possible people were involved/could have done it, etc (combinations, multiplication, addition, missing factors, etc) as well as draw a blueprint of the area (geometry)

Writing is pretty easy - they could write news reports from it, personal narratives about their involvement, re-write the entire story from different points of view.  They could also do a research report on famous detectives.

There are also resources out there (check amazon?) that are math mysteries for kids, science mysteries for kids, and other things like that.  I have them in my classroom somewhere!

Good luck, it sounds like a great experience for these kids!

Answer 3

How about a pirates treasure mystery?  They can use their reading skills to read about the pirates who hid the secret mystery treasure at the school hundreds of years ago and the principle of the school who is sworn to secrecy, they can write a letter to the counsel of pirates asking for clues, they can use their math skills to decode the treasure map...the kids love the pirate theme right now...good luck and god bless you taking on summer school!