Our Review Of The Critical Thinking Co.

Since the kiddos are so into law enforcement right now when we were given the opportunity to review Something's Fishy At Lake Iwannafisha by The Critical Thinking Co. I jumped on that chance!  This just looks like a very fun activity to do! It is a Whodunit Forensic Mystery!

    
The book is designed for grades 5-12 so it was a perfect fit for all my kids ages to do together. The kids can work in a group yet one child could do this activity as well on their own. They get to solve a crime mystery! They get to learn all about different forensic evidence and how it is used in a criminal investigation by reading about 20 pages giving an overview on the different types of evidences and how it can be used. Once they have read about that they use their critical thinking skills to solve the mystery!
The kids really enjoyed reading more into fingerprinting, ballistics, handwriting analysis and even about counterfeit currency. This is also the beginning of the activity.  This is also teacher involved as you play the role of Police Sergeant. You will want to read through all of the teacher notes and instructions for the book. To make hand outs for the students you can either copy from the book or use the link included to get a pdf print out of most of the files needed. 

       After reading through the forensic overview you can give the child the first of the police reports about a crime possibly commited at a cabin on Lake Iwannafisha. Now after that the critical thinking skills come in! The child needs to figure out which reports they should ask for next, which evidence they can examine that would be helpful and which way the investigation should go next. They will have to ask for all of this from the parent or teacher and only be given what they ask for. This way they are using their thoughts, there is no step 1, step 2, type directions it is all based on what the child thinks is the next logical step. 
       They can ask for witness reports, evidence reports, missing persons files and even lab results. Skyler was really into the counterfit money evidence. She now wants me to buy her a money checker pen! After going through the requested reports the children will fill out various forms for them.  They enjoyed getting to read the police reports and witness statements! They had so much fun taking turns on the readings. One would be the officer and the other would be the witness. They truly had fun making up voices as well for that activity!

                The kiddos liked quite a bit about this project. It was interesting to read all about different forensic evidence, and see the reports. They enjoyed working together on something it made it that more interesting to have three different points of view on what to do next. They also realized a very valuable lesson, not everything will have answers. This mystery like the real world does not tie up nice and neat with a bow and no loose ends! There is so many possibilities I am sure no two students will follow exactly like the other. 
In making the copies I tried to use the pdf files as much as possible but there are some that are not the full report so you will still have to make copies of some of the pages. The 20 or so pages of forensic information is also not included in those files so if you have multiple students you will need to make several copies or have them read from the book one at a time. I feel it would have been a major time saver if all the pages could have been printed from a file. Maybe that can be changed in the future to make getting the needed files for the students even quicker and then there are no worries about the possible loss of a page you had to pull out. 
The kiddos worked through all of this for a few hours for about four days. They had a lot of fun as we had never done anything like this before. We had never even used anything from The Critical Thinking Co. until now. I was pleased to see they offered many different products at a variety of ages to be used. They are also active on social media sites so please check out this wonderful company!
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