Student Guide

1
Student Guide
Phase 1: Ask the
questions
In this phase, you will be introduced to a murder
mystery storyline, “Who Murdered the Gym
Teacher?” and all the characters involved. You will
need to ask:
Who has been killed?
Where were they found?
What happened?
How did it happen?
We will also review statistics and ESL vocabulary
related activity which will lead to an investigation
You will then form your first hypothesis on who killed
the gym teacher.
Phase 2: Leads and
Probabilities
Whilst going through the story line, students
will record all the names of the characters
and create a tally chart using the
department each character is assigned to.
With the information gathered, students will
create another table to record the names of
characters, who did not have a solid alibi
about their whereabouts at the time of the
murder. This information will be used to
determine possible leads.
Student Guide
Phase 3: Looking for
clues
The investigation will continue. You will
receive a map of the school and anecdotes
from each character that was in the school
when the murder took place.
You will also receive a printed paper with
each character. You will cut out each
character and place them on the school map
based on the character anecdotes. This will
help you visualise the location of each
person in the school at the time of the
murder.
Also, to reinforce ESL vocabulary learned,
you will play a game. There will be 15 cards.
Each card will have an ESL word or phrase
from Phase 1. Students will be split into 2
groups. Each group will take turns drawing a
card at random. They must create a
sentence using this word or phrase. If they
make a sentence correctly, they earn a point
and then it will be the next team’s turn. If the
team cannot come up with a correct
sentence, they will lose a point and the other
team has one try to steal the point. 
This will continue until all 15 cards have
been used. Whoever has the most points,
wins!
2
 Phase 4: Narrow it down
Students will be given an activity where they Phase 6: The Grand
will be asked to calculate the mean, mode, Reveal
median and range of a set of data. With each
calculation, a clue to possible suspects The students will present their evidence and
would be revealed. Students will then use reasoning to the class using a gradual
this information during the interrogation elimination method and statistics for
process, to determine who killed the gym rationale. 
teacher.

Students must make sure to use vocabulary

Based on new evidence found in lesson 3, learned such as:
students will discuss the new probabilities, We believe that…
recalculate their statistics, and re-evaluate their
We have analyzed…
original hypothesis.
...and found that…
Our consensus is…
Phase 5: Detective
Interviews At the end, the teacher will reveal the real
culprit!
Students will be split up into groups. One person
from each group will be a detective while the others
will be given an the identity of a character that they
Students who guessed correctly will receive a
cannot reveal to the class.
Detective Certificate!

Detectives can ask questions to all the characters

but cannot ask “yes/no” questions.

At the end of the interrogation, the groups will get

back together and discuss what they have learned
from their questions.

At the end of this, students must make a second

and final hypothesis of who they think killed the gym
teacher. Each student will write their name and
which character they think is guilty on a piece of
paper and give it to the teacher.

3
Student Guide