Murder in E-6

So I came up with a great idea last week which involved disguising a lot of thinking and learning as a fun activity. These are the kinds things I am always racking my brain to try to come up with for lessons. The idea was to stage a fake murder and then the kids would have to identify the killer based on the DNA extracted from a hair sample left at the scene. They needed to use techniques called DNA fingerprinting and gel electrophoresis which, in actuality, would be impossible to do here, but I made adjustments. Just briefly the way DNA fingerprinting works is that DNA samples are cut up into pieces but since every individual's DNA is unique, the number and size of the pieces are different for each person. Then gel electrophoresis separates these pieces by size and creates kind of a graph and unknown DNA samples can be matched with known individuals.

 I wrote out a scenario in which a student got murdered in my room late at night and there was a list of suspects, each without adequate alibis who had already been investigated and interviewed. A summary (written by me with some help from Amber) of backgrounds of all the suspects was also provided. I also created a murder victim out of construction paper and blocked off a corner of my room with orange tape on which I wrote "CAUTION Crime Scene."

Here's the intro: It started out as a normal day on February 1, 2012. Ms. Abby arrived at school at 7:55 am, signed in at the office, picked up a bulletin, and then headed to her classroom, E-6. The usual Vailoa students were sitting outside her classroom. Then she got out her classroom key. But wait…something was wrong. The door was slightly open. Weird. She pushed open the door the rest of the way and stood in shock as the door banged against the cabinets. One of her students lay in a pool of blood in the back corner of the room. She slammed the door and ran to the office to report the incident. But oh no! All the police were off island. Wait! The biology and chemistry students can use DNA fingerprinting to solve the murder! After some initial investigations and interviews there were 6 suspects:

I continued with a detail description of the suspects which included Amber, Quinn, our principal, another science teacher, and two students. Here are descriptions from Amber and Quinn:

Ms. Amber:

Unbeknownst to most teachers and students at LHS, Ms. Amber has a history of violent behavior. She’s spent time in jail for grand theft auto and assault with a deadly weapon. On the night of the murder she stayed at school late supposedly helping students study for the SAT. However, there were anonymous tips that she was seen lurking around classroom E-6 around 8pm. When questioned she denied any connection to or knowledge about the murder, but the interviewer noticed her unwillingness to meet his gaze and her shifty eyeballs.

Ms. Quinn:

We all know Ms. Quinn as the happy-go-lucky, yet slightly aloof, English teacher who enjoys running and baking cookies. But could it be under her innocent exterior lurks the devious mind of a killer? No one smiles that much unless they’re hiding something. She claimed to be at the basketball game at FMS but was conspicuously absent during the fourth quarter, sources say. Her whereabouts are unaccounted for between the time of 7:30-8:30 pm. As a runner she could have easily made it to LHS and back in a short amount of time. How well do you really know Ms. Quinn?


I'm pretty sure some of the vocabulary was lost on them, but I found it amusing and interesting when I was writing it so that counts for something. Their favorite part was the paragraph I wrote about the principal but I decide not to post that on the internet...


I then made up the DNA sequence for each of the 6 suspects and wrote it on the blackboard. They had to collect a "hair" (piece of black construction paper) that the murderer left at the crime scene and turn it in to me to "run through my lab." I then provided them with the gel electrophoresis results from the hair. Then they had to figure out which of the suspects' DNA matched the hair DNA they got at the crime scene. That's were all the work and thinking came in, but luckily most of them were so wrapped up in the whole thing that they didn't notice. Some even stayed after the bell to finish figuring out who the killer was! All in all it was an excellent activity.