Christmas Close Reading Digital Mystery - Who Destroyed the Gingerbread House?

Bring the holiday spirit to your ELA classroom with this Christmas reading digital activity that challenges students to explore and find text evidence, make inferences, and read more closely. This resource provides all the necessary digital materials to facilitate this fun and festive Christmas mystery in your classroom. Students will work collaboratively, enhancing their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills as they unravel the digital mystery together. Although this works best in December, the resource doesn't specifically mention Christmas, so you can use it at any time of the year.

Every year, the Winterton family hosts their Gingerbread House Competition, but this December, disaster strikes—the reigning champion’s gingerbread ‘chalet’ is found smashed during the highly anticipated unveiling. Students must sift through clues, analyze motives, and read closely to solve the Christmas mystery and determine which suspect is responsible.

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 online education.

Included in This Digital Christmas Reading Activity Inference Mystery:

➡️ Inference Mystery Google Slides: A 15-slide Google Slides presentation walks students through the entire investigation. The slides introduce the Christmas backstory, highlight each suspect, display the evidence, and reveal the explanation behind every suspect’s innocence or guilt. The slides are designed to engage students and encourage critical thinking as they analyze the clues and find text evidence.

➡️ Digital Poster: Display this visually appealing digital poster designed to grab students’ attention, setting the stage and drawing students into the mystery ahead.

➡️ Original Digital Narrative Backstory: Use this short story to introduce the mystery. The story contains hidden clues and subtle hints, and the narrative will engage students’ curiosity and pique their interest in the mystery.

➡️ A Variety of Digital Clues and Evidence: Students will examine various pieces of digital evidence that contain important clues they must analyze closely. Evidence appears in many forms, including a photo of the gingerbread house display, a gaming chat log, a text message thread, a veterinary clinic report, a family group-chat conversation, a delivery driver notice, an official Gingerbread House Competition rule sheet, and an overheard conversation transcript.

➡️ 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, both in slide format and integrated into the teacher slides, to efficiently review students’ work and share the reasons for each suspect’s innocence or guilt.

How This Digital Christmas Reading Activity Inference Mystery Works:

• Start by putting up the poster on your door to build anticipation when students enter the room. When students enter, put them into small groups so they can work together to solve the mystery.
• Use the Google Slides to guide you through each element of the Christmas mystery activity. The slides will help you introduce the story and the evidence to the class.
• Hand out all the evidence to students and allow them time to make their predictions and inferences to solve the mystery.
• Once each group has made their final prediction, use the Google Slides to reveal the culprit and go through each suspect, showing evidence of their innocence or guilt.

If you like this, you’ll love this resource:
>>> The Reading Mysteries Program

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