Class Activity: Victims and Sleuths

In my differentiation class, we were assigned to read an article about a teacher named Sharon, who utilized Morning Meetings every single day in her 3rd grade classroom. Sharon is convinced that Morning Meetings are the reason behind her students' success.

The article describes one of the class activities that Sharon used in her classroom and because I want to remember the activity in the near future (or far future), I have recorded it on this here blog.

        Victims and Sleuths

In this activity, the teacher secretly designates one or more of the students as a "murderer." All of the students scan the circle  making eye contact with one another. The "murderer" winks at his or her victim, who then must fall over. At any time during the scanning, a student may guess the identity of the murderer  If the student guesses correctly, the murderer is "done for." The game continues until the last "murderer" is caught.

Results: Students love to be creative and dramatic in their death scenes, and they developed new vocabulary to avoid using violent terms, eventually coming up with "perpetrator" rather than "murderer." The activity also promoted conflict resolution skills among the children as they tried to solve the problem of honesty in the game that is, falling over when winked at and refraining from pretending to be the perpetrator!


Source: "Like Being at the Breakfast table:" The Power of Classroom Morning Meeting by Elizabeth Bandy and Sharon Ketts

My own thoughts: I love this idea for a game! I bet you could do a different version where you send one student out in the hall. Everyone knows who the murderer(s) is except for that one student. Then they stand in the middle of the circle and try and figure out who the murder is. It would be really fun to let them dress up as a detective. And they win a certificate if they can solve the crime!