Preparation for the Event

Divide your students into teams. Each team will be responsible for discovering one mystery presented by the other classrooms. The students will have twenty minutes to solve the mysteries presented by the other classes.

 

Review Agenda AM.pdf or the Agenda PM.pdf with students so that they understand the process for the day. If possible, take along a poster of the agenda to post in your distance learning room to help students keep on track during the day.

 

Have students practice the presentation. Time the presentation to make sure it is 7 minutes or less. Emphasize speaking slowly, loudly and clearly. The biggest issue with this project is audio. Remind students that everyone else is listening carefully to their presentation to take notes. The goal is to have the other students clearly hear the clues and be able to record the information. Communicating the clues understandably is crucial! If students are reading clues, have them read from note cards instead of paper. Rustling paper during a video conference can make it impossible to hear the clue.

 

Make sure students understand the process for asking one question of each classroom. After the research portion each team will be allowed to ask each classroom one question. Each school should come up with a question for all the other classrooms. The questions should be 'eliminating' questions. In other words if the students believe the town or city is this or that, they pose a question that eliminates one. The questions should be "yes or no" questions only! In addition, do not ask, "Is your mystery The Battle of San Jacinto?" as this type of question gives it away for the rest of the schools.

 

Revealing The Answer

Prepare a visual to reveal the answer to your presentation. Be creative here if you want!

 

Materials to bring:

• Bring all materials needed for your presentation. 
• Copy the Note Taking Guide.pdffor each student in the class. (Suggestion: if you have each student take notes on each presentation, if a team figures out a mystery quickly they can help another team.)
• Bring any print materials for students to use in their research such as:
  • Atlases
  • Textbooks
  • World Book Encyclopedia
  • Wall Maps
  • Reference books from the library
  • Optional: Paper and markers for students to create signs for your document camera to share their guesses. (Some classes have done this if they guess the answers faster than other teams.)
• If students have laptops, have them bookmark the Internet resources to be used during the research portion of the event (you might even have them make that the homepage for the day).