Critical Thinking Mystery Game: Clue by Clue PowerPoint Bundle

Clue by Clues are mystery activities that help students practice critical thinking skills, reading strategies including close reading, critical reading, and inference, and get them discussing and talking! Students work in pairs or small groups to solve a mystery. They get a situation with a mystery. 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, what it tells them about the situation, and how it fits with the previous clues

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

• Modal verbs of speculation
• Opinion language
• Hedging
• Conclusions
• Emphasis
• Hypotheticals

They are also having a lot of fun!

Clue by Clues make great warm-up activities, fillers, or time killers for those last minutes of class and early finishers. They can be critical thinking and 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.

By popular demand, I'm offering all my clue by clue mysteries in PowerPoint slides format in one big bundle, plus a free mystery story organizing worksheet This is a growing bundle so you'll get notice when I add Clue by Clues in the future!

Each individual mystery is in PowerPoint format and contains:

• Teacher's guide explaining how to use the activity including suggestions for warm-ups — 2 slides
• The situation with the mystery to be solved - 1 slide
• Clues, one per slide, for students to read and discuss as they try to solve the mystery — 4-20 slides
• A set of hints if students need it — 1 slide
• The solution Students are not left hanging and the solution follows from the clues, no gimmicks or cute tricks here — 1 slide
• Many have follow-up questions to extend discussion — 1 slide

Some are logic puzzles, some are crime stories, some are a bit silly, but all of them require critical thinking and logic skills. And all of them get students thinking, talking, and working!

You can also check out the bundle of printable PDF Clue by Clues if you prefer that format to PowerPoint.

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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!