Pam Stryker: CSI, Second Grade Style

2005 Merit Winner

Lesson Plan
Pam Stryker
Barton Creek Elementary
Austin, Texas

CSI, Second Grade Style

Lesson Overview

The scene is set: 

  • A small pile of white powder just inside the classroom door,
  • Footprints made from the same white substance leading to a small white box covered with fingerprints,
  • A small fiber attached to the box, and
  • A note saturated with a perfume smell and signed with a lipstick kiss:

Dear Ms. Stryker's Class,
I've been watching you this year. You always walk so quietly in the hall and are so considerate to others in the school. I wanted to surprise you with a treat. Please let me know if you enjoyed it.
    

No signature … just a kiss.

And what's inside the box? Cookies!
The mystery begins with a flurry of excitement.

"What a mess!" "Careful, don't track it in." "Look, a box! What's inside? A note!" "I bet Mrs. Linnecki brought them!" "My mom makes cookies like these!" "Mrs. Styrker did it." "Look at her shoes … no not her. I wonder who it was." 

The air is buzzing with enthusiasm.

Through a series of hands-on labs and classroom activities, this 12-day unit is designed to involve second or third grade students in the processes of science: observing, measuring, collecting data, creating charts and tables, predicting, analyzing, and generalizing from the data collected. It is a unit that naturally develops inquiry skills with the students constantly asking "what if" and immediately testing their ideas. In addition, the students learn to use many tools of science: hand magnifiers, microscopes, tape measures, and rulers. 

TEKS Learning Objectives:

The student conducts classroom investigations following school safety procedures. The student is expected to:

  • Demonstrate safe practices during classroom and field investigations, and
  • Learn how to use and conserve resources and dispose of materials.

The student develops abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry in the field and the classroom. The student is expected to:

  • Ask questions about objects and events,
  • Plan and conduct simple descriptive investigations,
  • Compare results of investigations with what students and scientists know about the world,
  • Gather information using simple equipment and tools to extend the senses,
  • Construct reasonable explanations and draw conclusions using information and prior knowledge, and
  • Communicate explanations about investigations.

The student knows that information and critical thinking are used in making decisions. The student is expected to:

  • Make decisions using information,
  • Discuss and justify the merits of decisions, and
  • Explain a problem in his or her own words and identify a task and solution related to the problem.

The student uses age-appropriate tools and models to verify that objects and parts of objects can be observed, described, and measured. The student is expected to:

  • Collect information using tools including rulers, meter sticks, hand lenses, and computers, and
  • Compare objects and parts of objects, using standard and nonstandard units;

The student knows that objects and events have properties and patterns. The student is expected to:

  • Classify and sequence objects and events based on properties and patterns, and
  • Identify, predict, replicate, and create patterns including those seen in charts, graphs, and numbers.

The student knows that many types of change occur. The student is expected to observe, measure, record, analyze, predict, and illustrate changes in size, color, position, quantity, and movement.

Methods of Implementation

Phase One

As the mystery unfolds, the students photograph, collect, and observe the evidence at the scene, then predict what each piece could imply about the person who brought the mysterious box of cookies. They create a possible suspect description and begin their list of suspects. After shared reading of two children's detective picture books, the students discuss what a detective is, does, and thinks. Then they draw a detective, adding the tools that he or she would need and cartoon-like thought bubbles showing what the detective might think or ask. When someone is available, we have had a guest speaker from a local law enforcement agency talk about crime scene investigation.

Phase Two

For the next seven days, the students develop their skills as forensic scientists through a series of labs that enable them to analyze the evidence further. After each lab, the students are responsible for filling in a lab journal describing what they did in the lab, what they discovered, and how that will help them solve the mystery.

  1. Fingerprint Lab.  They explore and record their own fingerprints and learn to identify traditional fingerprint patterns.
  2. Scent Lab.  While practicing the wafting method to safely smell a substance, they match scents and identify those that are familiar.  
  3. Footprint/Lip Print Lab.  They take shoe rubbings and lipstick lip prints, measure each, describe the patterns, and compare them. 
  4. Chromatography Lab.  Using a small piece of the writing from the original note, the students compare it to samples of other types of black inks. They discover through the chromatography lab that each type of ink has a different color pattern when water is allowed to slowly separate the ink into its different components.
  5. Handwriting Analysis Lab.  Handwriting analysis happens daily in a second grade classroom, each time students forget to put their names on their papers. For this lab, the students get into small groups. Each student writes a simple sentence on a strip of paper and does not write his or her name on it. Then the students select one of their lab reports that has been labeled with their name. Each group scrambles the sentences and lab reports and passes them to another group that will match them based on handwriting. The groups then discuss and make a list of the characteristics that helped them match the handwriting samples. 
  6. Fibers Lab.  They discover that microscopes and hand magnifiers become useful tools when observing, drawing, and describing different treads and yarns.
  7. Detective Investigation Kits.  The final day of detective school is used to plan and collect all the tools that they will need in their investigation for their suspects: tape, pencil, index card, record sheet for fingerprinting, crayon, paper for shoe print rubbing, baggies to collect fibers and tissues with favorite perfume or cologne, and other clues. They then make a detective case from a paper bag to store all that they need. 

Phase Three

Following the detective school, students begin to narrow down the list of suspects, and practice and schedule the suspect interviews. The next day, investigation teams of  three or four are off to collect the data from the final list of suspects. They return and compare their data to the actual evidence. This is recorded on a large class matrix. Finally, a likely suspect emerges as they review the matrix. The team that investigated that suspect verifies that he or she brought the cookies. Finally, the students write letters to thank all suspects for their involvement and especially to thank the one who brought the cookies. Mystery solved after about 12 exciting days of work!

The Mystery Unit Curriculum Integration

  • As reading groups read mysteries, comprehension focuses on sequencing, implied meanings, cause and effect, and main idea - all thinking skills any good detective must have. 
  • Writing topics evolve naturally with descriptions of who they suspect and why, descriptions of the scene, and creations of their own mysteries or a new ending to the mysteries they are reading. Finally, letters are written to thank all the suspects for their time.
  • Technology is integrated throughout the unit. The students take digital pictures of all the evidence and mystery scene. They create wanted posters for the suspect that they think is most likely to have delivered the cookies, learning how to add a picture of the suspect from a file on the server. They design and print business cards to use when they interview the suspect.
  • Math activities focus on patterns, missing numbers, story problems, and problem solving. Students work on finding the relevant information in a problem and eliminating the distracting factors.

Materials Used

Per group of four:

  • Finger Print Lab: four sharpened pencils, four index cards,  roll of clear tape, and fingerprint record sheet.
  • Fiber Lab: three-inch piece of four different fibers taped to index card, colored pencils, microscope, magnifying lenses, and record sheet.
  • Scent Lab: 12 film canisters labeled A-F and 1-6, 12 cotton balls, six scents, and record sheet.
  • Handwriting Lab: four samples of student writing, four strips of lined paper, and record sheet.
  • Chromatography Lab: four wide-mouth plastic cups, 1x 4-inch strips of newsprint, four different brands of black markers, clear tape, four pencils, and record sheet.
  • Footprint/Lip Print Lab: four crayons (unwrapped), eight sheets of white paper, lipstick, index cards, four cotton swabs, and record sheet.

Suspect matrix record chart - 3 x 5 foot chart paper.
Manila paper for detective pictures.

Evaluation Tool

Student evaluations are based on their detective lab folder, data collection from their suspect, and evaluation of that data. Each lab has two components: a record sheet and a journal sheet. Accuracy and neatness of recording data are evaluated on the record sheet, while detail in the description of the lab and reasonableness in what they discovered is evaluated on the lab journal sheets. Each sheet is worth five points for a total of 70 points. The data collected from the suspect and the conclusion drawn from that data account for an additional 30 points, totaling 100 points. In addition, teacher observation is a strong component of the evaluation; the teacher looks for the students' mastery of the process skills as well as their correct and safe use of materials in a lab. These observations are kept as anecdotal records and shared with the parents on the report cards.

Unit Effectiveness

This unit combines good science investigation with the excitement of a mystery. Students are mentally engaged from the onset. Their science labs and learning have a real-life connection. They are observing everyone in the school as possible suspects. They tell their families about what they have discovered daily. Communication, discovery, and reasoning are all woven into a plot of the TEKS that they must master. The best effect: They are so involved that there are few classroom management problems. "Is science really over? That was a short time!" 

Resources

The Lawrence Hall of Science GEMS teacher guide, Mystery Festival, was the inspiration for creating the unit, although this unit is very different from the ones GEMS presents. 

Literature connections:

  • Detective LaRue Letters From the Investigation , Mark Teague
  • The Web Files , Margie Palatinin and Richard Egielski

 

Last Updated On

September 09, 2010

Originally Published On

March 23, 2010