Clever Courier Critical Thinking Mystery PowerPoint Edition

This mystery activity encourages discussion and critical thinking, as students solve a puzzle: A courier takes one look at a man's doorstep and immediately calls the police to report her murder! How did he know? Can your students piece the clues together to figure it out? And to figure out who killed the man, who has been quarantining alone for several days.

Note that COVID-19 is not mentioned explicitly but this mystery does lend itself to discussion of the pandemic and optional follow-up/extension questions do reference being locked down or quarantined and shopping or ordering habits.

The PowerPoint format makes it easy to share face-to-face in class or in online classes, distance learning, or remote learning (whatever we're calling it now)! You can also easily import it in Google Slides and use it in Google Classroom!

Clickhere for the printable PDF version of The Clever Courier.

What is a Clue by Clue Mystery?

It's a great warm-up, critical thinking game, conversation starter, filler, or a time killer for early finishers. Students are given a mystery to solve--whodunit or how did they do it or why. They have to figure it out by reading a series of clues, one at a time. As they receive each clue, they speculate on its significance and what it tells them about the situation.

Once they have received all the clues, they should have enough information to figure it out!

Inside find:

• Teacher Notes on how to warm students up and how to use the clues.
• 8 clues, one per slide, so students can go slow and think deeply.
• Hints in the form of guiding questions to help students figure out what happened.
• The Solution: Students are not left hanging.
• Extension Questions about quarantining and the pandemic (optional).

Why Use Clue by Clues?

Clue by Clues encourage critical thinking and discussion. They are also close reading activities that teach students to look for details, synthesize information from different sources, apply prior knowledge about the world, and to recognize the logic of a claim and evaluate its validity.

While students are solving the mysteries, they are also developing their spoken language skills, using language such as:

* Modal verbs of speculation: She must have forgotten her keys, It could have been the butler

* Opinion language: I think...., I’m positive..., I’m not sure...

* Hedging: It’s possible, probably, maybe, it’s not impossible.

* Conclusions: That means that...

* Emphasis: There’s no way that...

* Hypotheticals: What if he didn’t do it, If he was at the movies, he couldn’t have done it.

They are also a lot of fun!

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Enjoy this? Check out my entire Mystery Section with more clue by clues in different formats. I also have activities to help students write their own mysteries and more!

And please leave a review. It helps others find this resource and gives me valuable feedback when creating new ones!