Distance Learning Critical Thinking Mystery Activity: The Perfect Crime PPT

In this fun mystery activity, students have to follow the clues to figure out how a woman killed her husband without anyone suspecting anything!

This activity can also be found in printable PDF form or as Google Slides.

What is a Clue by Clue Mystery?

It's a great warm-up, filler, or 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!

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.

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!

Teacher Notes on how to use them are included with hints and the solution along with a students sheet that contains the clues for you to copy and cut up to give to students.

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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!