Halloween Close Reading Digital Mystery Inference Activity Who Stole the Candy?

Halloween Close Reading Digital Mystery Inference Activity - Who Stole the Candy?: Engage your students with a captivating digital close reading inference activity that challenges them to explore and find text evidence, make inferences, and read more closely. This resource provides all the necessary materials to facilitate this fun and creative reading activity in your classroom. Students will have the opportunity to work collaboratively, enhancing their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills as they unravel the mystery together. This works well around Halloween; however, it can also be used at any point in the year.

It is the morning after Halloween. Alex, who had a great night trick or treating, wakes up and heads straight for his pillowcase to stuff his pockets with candy before school. However, much to his surprise, his pillowcase is empty. Someone stole his Halloween candy. Your students need to help him find out who did it.

This is a Google-compatible activity, and students complete all the work on the computer. This works well with distance learning, 1:1 classrooms, remote teaching, Google Classroom, or for online education.

Included In This Digital Halloween Close Reading Inference Mystery Activity:

➡️ Inference Mystery Google Slides: This 15-slide Google Slides presentation serves as the guide for the activity, leading students through the mystery with a captivating backstory, detailed evidence, and thorough explanations for each suspect's innocence or guilt. The slides are crafted to engage students and encourage critical thinking as they analyze the clues and find text evidence.

➡️ Original Narrative Backstory: Use this short story to introduce the mystery. Within the story are hidden clues and subtle hints, and the narrative will engage students' curiosity and initiate the mystery.

➡️ A Variety of Digital Clues and Evidence: Students will receive a variety of texts in different forms that include digital clues and evidence. Students must read the text closely and use their inference skills to analyze each of the clues. There is a text message, a post office slip, a note on the door, social media posts, an email, a veterinarian medical report, a dog walking schedule, an animal rescue information sheet, a letter, and a text message.

➡️ Text Evidence Digital Graphic Organizer: Students will use the provided digital graphic organizer to organize their findings and evaluate the guilt or innocence of each suspect. This tool encourages students to support their conclusions with text evidence from the investigation.

➡️ Teacher Answer Key: Use the detailed answer key integrated within the Google Slides to efficiently review students' work and share the reasons for each suspect's innocence or guilt.

How The Digital Halloween Close Reading Inference Mystery Activity Works:

• Use the Google Slides presentation to guide you through each element of the lesson. The slides will help you introduce the story and evidence to students.

• Share the digital file with students and allow them time to make their predictions and inferences and solve the mystery.

• Once students have made their final prediction, use the Google Slides presentation to reveal the culprit and go through each of the suspects to show the evidence of their innocence or guilt.

What Teachers Are Saying About This Halloween Close Reading Inference Mystery Activity:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I have purchased several of these mysteries for my students. They absolutely love them! I often have to give them hints or eliminate a suspect to help, but they are engaged and enjoy solving these. Giving them rewards (candy) also helps motivate them! Highly recommend!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This product was super engaging for my middle schoolers. Perfect addition to my centers. Thank you!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I actually used this with 4th grade students in groups. I downloaded the freebie version for my students to practice inferences, and they loved it and asked to do more! So this Halloween version was perfect!

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