Close Reading Digital Mystery Text Evidence Inference Activity - Corn Maze

Close Reading Digital Mystery Text Evidence Inference Activity - Corn Maze: 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.

Farmer Austin Birch is preparing for his corn maze to open to the public tomorrow. He spends the afternoon in his barn finalizing the last-minute details. When he walks outside, he is surprised to discover the corn maze destroyed. Your students need to determine who did this.

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.

This is included in our best-selling full-year reading program:
>>> Reading Mysteries Digital Program

Included In This Corn Maze Digital 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 missing sign for a scarecrow, animal information sheets for crows and for cows, a work order for a fence repair service, a police report, a text message, an email, a poster for a pumpkin patch, a police radio conversation, and a social media 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 into the Google Slides to efficiently review students' work and share the reasons for each suspect's innocence or guilt.

How This Digital Corn Maze Close Reading Inference Mystery Activity Works:

• Use the Google 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.
• Share all the evidence with 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 Google Slides to reveal the culprit and go through each of the suspects to show the evidence of their innocence or guilt.

If you like this, you’ll love this resource: 
>>> Inference Activities Bundle

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