Virtual Classroom Murder Mystery Lesson

Desperate for something that will engage students during virtual meetings? Try a virtual classroom murder mystery!

In this post I’m explaining how to adapt my murder mystery lesson to an online meeting. Click here if you haven’t yet read my post about murder mystery lessons.

Okay, so let’s talk about how this very social lesson converts to distance learning.

Prep Work

As much as the students take the lead once it begins, there is a lot of front-load prep involved.

• Introduce the idea at least a few days in advance of the lesson.

• You want to make this an event – advertise it in advance to get the students excited about it.
• You’ll also need to get a headcount of who is coming. You can do an online poll, a Google Form, email invites – whatever. I always create my mysteries knowing which characters to use depending on how many students I have. If I know I have 13 definitely showing up, I plan for 10-15 just in case. You can also plan for everyone but only give essential parts to those you know will show up.
• Just got this review from a TpT customer who had a great idea to make sure ALL characters are covered even if you don’t have enough students for each character: “My students loved this and have asked to do another one. I liked the resources encouraging them to look at the clues and the culminating questions. For those with smaller classes, I did this with a class of 9 students. I tried to assign what I felt were the most important players to the students in my class, and then I used Flipgrid to record interviews with the other personas. I pasted QR codes from Flipgrid around the room so students could hear from the others involved.” Genius!
• Send out instructions and hold a virtual meeting the day before to go over the instructions. I always include a list of instructions and a background story for all of my mysteries. Again, check my initial blog post for more info on instructions and background stories.
• Send out character cards and the map 30-10 minutes before your mystery starts. See my sample card below. Be available via email or Zoom to answer any student questions. If you send them out too early, students may start without you via text and other messaging devices. If you send them out right before you begin students don’t have enough time to thoroughly read through them.
• Notice the bullet points on the sample below: I need students to know they must have access to their papers during the virtual meeting. Students can have the Google Slide on one side of their screen and the Zoom/virtual meeting open on the other half of their screen.

Virtual Mystery Event

Yay! Time for the main event!

You don’t want to make it too rigid and structured, but you also can’t have students all shouting questions and answers at random. They’ll likely talk over one another and have trouble hearing each other.

At least for the very beginning, consider having everyone muted except for one student asking the question and one student answering the question. I suggest creating some sort of order (maybe alphabetically by character or student name) and have each student ask two questions. Go around at least once like this and then consider opening it up and letting the students steer the conversations.

For the first questions I show students how I set up my notes sheet to model it for them. See example below. I include a worksheet when I’m in person with them, but I doubt many can print out worksheets right now. Handwritten is probably best because it helps reinforce that they can always create a quick chart on their own – no worksheet needed.

I set a time limit. Give them 45 minutes to an hour to ask their questions.

That’s a Wrap!

How you end it is up to you and what your goal is with the lesson.

If your lesson goal is to teach inference and red herrings, then I would have students identify at least two red herrings as well as identify the assailant and what clues allowed the student to make that inference. Ask the students to submit the information prior to the next meeting and then do the big assailant reveal the next time you meet.

If your lesson goal is just to have fun and engage, then I’d have everyone write down who they think is the assailant and then hold up their names to the camera on the count of three. You can also use chat if not everyone is using the camera feature. Then open it up and let everyone chat for a bit. My students love chatting about the lesson once the secret is out. So many lies and rumors to discuss!

This is a really tricky time for students. A virtual classroom mystery could be just what they need for a brief escape.

Interested in my lesson? I have it posted at my TeachersPayTeachers store. Click here to out my high school version or here to check out the middle school version.

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