Back to School Team Building Activity - Close Reading Inference Mystery

In this back to school inference mystery, your students will solve this close reading mystery as they analyze text evidence, make inferences, and think critically to uncover the culprit! This is a fun way to challenge students to look for text evidence, infer information, and read more closely as they attempt to determine who stole books from the classroom library. The resource includes everything you need to facilitate the back to school activity in your classroom. It works great as a back to school activity, but can also be used within the classroom at any point!

While adding more books from her personal collection to her popular classroom library, Ms. Ramirez is surprised to discover that six of her beloved books are mysteriously missing from the shelves. It's up to your students to use their close reading and inference skills to figure out who stole them!

Included In This Back to School Reading Mystery Activity:

➡️ Back to School Mystery Presentation: A 19-slide PowerPoint presentation that guides students through the backstory, key evidence, the final reveal, and detailed explanations of why each suspect is innocent or guilty.

➡️ Back to School Mystery Classroom Poster: Put this poster up on your classroom door or somewhere visible so that when students come in, they are hooked into the activity.

➡️ Original Narrative Backstory: Use this short story to set up and initiate the mystery, with clues hidden within the text!

➡️ A Variety of Clues and Evidence: Students must analyze and infer from multiple forms of evidence, including a book drive fundraiser poster, a library late notice, a letter, an email, a book club sign-up sheet, a text message, and a teacher social media group.

➡️ Mystery Graphic Organizer: A structured space for students to track their findings, organize their reasoning, and eliminate suspects based on evidence.

➡️ Teacher Answer Key: Provided in both single-slide format and within the slideshow, making it easy to review students’ reasoning and conclusions.

How to use this Back to School Team Building Activity in your classroom:

• Start by putting up the poster on your door to build anticipation when students enter the room. When students enter, put them in small groups, so they can work together to try to solve this back to school inference mystery.
• Use the presentation slides to guide you through each element of the lesson. The slides will help you introduce the story and evidence to each of the groups.
• Hand out all the evidence to students and allow them time to make their predictions and inferences and solve the mystery.
• Once each group has made their final prediction, use the presentation slides 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 Back to School Inference Mystery:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ My students had a lot of fun with this activity! It was very easy to use.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ So much fun! Very engaging for kids and a great teamwork building, back to school activity for my new classes. It was so successful I snapped up a few more and am using another next week as an intro to our new mystery novel/unit we're beginning. Thanks so much!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Another excellent and engaging resource by Presto Plans. Can't go wrong using their resources!

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