Christmas Close Reading Mystery Inference Activity - Who Destroyed the Snowman?

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Christmas Close Reading Inference Mystery - Who Destroyed the Snowman?: This Christmas close reading activity is a fun way to engage your students and challenge them to look for text evidence, infer information, and read more closely. The resource includes everything you need to facilitate the activity in your classroom. The resource doesn't specifically mention Christmas, so you can consider it winter-themed and appropriate for any time between November and April!

Students will read the back story to learn that Mia and her father work all day on building a huge snowman for the winter carnival in hopes of winning one of the three snowmobile prizes! When they wake up in the morning, however, their creation has been destroyed. Someone has sabotaged them, and it's up to your students to figure out who did it.

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Included In This Christmas Close Reading Activity:

➡️ PowerPoint Presentation: This 15-slide PowerPoint will guide the mystery with the backstory, evidence, culprit reveal, and detailed explanations for why each suspect is innocent and why the culprit is guilty.

➡️ "Who Destroyed The Snowman?" Classroom Poster: You can 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 story to introduce the students who the story of Mia and her father. They are participating in a snowman building content and wake up to find their creation destroyed! This will set up and initiate the mystery for students.

➡️ A Variety of Close Reading Clues: Students will explore a variety of different digital clues that require them to close read and use their inference skills. There is an email, a text message, a solar light repair work order, a list, a community bulletin board with a variety of clues, and a senior citizen online message board.

➡️ "Who Destroyed The Snowman" Graphic Organizer: Students will use this slide to keep track of their findings that support or refute different suspects in the mystery.

➡️ Teacher Answer Key: Use the included answer key to review the mystery with students. The answer key is incredibly detailed with specific evidence that either supports for refutes each of the suspect's involvement.

How The Christmas Close Reading Activity Works:
  • 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 the 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 Christmas Close Reading Activity:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This is the perfect resource to use in the holiday season. Students have to use so many reading strategies that we talk about in class, but hey are so engaged in the mystery that they do not grumble about it. It is so helpful to have this on hand to help fill that class time when you do not want to start a new unit.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ As usual, the variety of documents students have to read and the strategies they come up with to solve the mystery are great! VERY engaging resource like all your mysteries! Used it before the Christmas break : perfect! Keep them coming!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I love using these mystery inferencing activities with my 7th-grade ELA classes! We set up each of the pages in different stations around our large group instruction room, and students are always interested in getting to the answer! They are set up in a fun and engaging way!

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