A little background first
I hope all of this will make sense. I have tweaked this lesson a lot over the last few years. It can be changed easily to meet the needs of your students and to match your curriculum, textbooks or online webquest tools that you might use instead. I would LOVE to hear how you use it in the future. Enjoy! Juli Gilbert
This lesson is a culminating activity to a study on textbook tools. We have previously done a scavenger hunt for facts in our Social Studies Textbook using the following textbook tools: Gazetteer, Biographical Dictionary, Glossary, Index, Table of Contents, Atlas, Historical Documents, and U.S. States section. I choose this textbook because it has so many tools in it that can transfer to web-based tools as well. Students are in teams of 4 or 5 and they are given an investigation folder with a suspect’s statement to police (see link at the end), and a reminder of all the tools that will be needed to solve the crime (the above listed resources that are in the book). note: textbooks used, Houghton Mifflin Social Studies United States History: Civil War to Today (Georgia Edition) and Houghton Mifflin Social Studies United States History:Early Years (Georgia Edition) You will need at least one textbook for every two students. To begin, I read the crime aloud….
The Crime
Wendy Witch was busy cleaning her spooky castle in the deep, dark woods. She had invited several of her ghoulish friends over for a pot of her famous toad stew and she wanted to be sure that all the cob webs and dust bunnies were in just the right spot. She says that she remembered placing her broom in the corner of her séance room after brushing up all the spider legs and bug eyes around her crystal ball. Her friends arrived one by one. First to arrive was Bandit Bart, followed by Skeleton Scam. Vulture Vinny flew in from the south and entered through a window and finally Pumpkinhead Patti came in late, as usual. Wendy says that as they sat down around the table to enjoy some brew and stew, she noticed the corner was bare. She looked at her “friends”, who all seemed to look guilty. She says she saw no broomstick peeping out from behind any of her guests. She was so angry that her broomstick was missing that she flew off the handle and began casting spells on all her guests. They all ran from the castle screaming, some being turned into toads, mice and bats. Wendy has vowed to get to the bottom of this terrible crime. (I have another crime for 4th grade, this is the fifth grade one. I learned quickly that I couldn’t use the same crime from one grade to the next, the kids don’t buy it! You need to have fresh material for the 5th grade year. See the link at the end of this post for all of the documents for both grade levels).
I give the teams instructions that they must look at the information that the suspect has provided to the police and determine, based on the facts, if the information they have stated is true or false. Each suspect has give 5 statements. The students then use the textbook tools to try and figure out which statements are T/F. Example: Skeleton Scam claims to be from Spain which is 40 degrees North and 5 degrees West. The students would use the Gazetteer to find the latitude and longitude for Spain and then circle that that statement was true. (All copies of the suspects sheets can be found at the end of this post).
After all facts have been determined, I give each team a list of clues. I also give them the other suspect sheets so they can compare facts. I explain that only one suspect will match all the clues. Once they have determined who they believe has done the crime, they fill out an arrest warrant and turn it in to the chief (That’s me). The first team to arrest the correct suspect gets the star for the day (see my previous post about Amazing Race of Knowledge for more information on the stars). At the end, we arrest the suspect and I take his picture from the wall and put it behind bars.
To Set the Mood:
To add more fun, I blast Mission Impossible as the students enter the media center. It also plays softly while they are investigating, looking for facts. I tell them all good investigators have a theme song! I make buttons that look like police badges for each student to wear during the investigation. I also use my Iphone to time them, this keeps them on task. The way I time them is I say things like, “The suspects are headed to the airport right now. The informants say they will arrive at the security checkpoint in 7 minutes”. I then set the timer for 7 minutes (make sure to use a cool sound that will get their attention). Periodically, I say goofy things to make them work faster and really dig in. I tell them they are headed out of the country and we have to apprehend them before they get on the plane.