This murder mystery activity was designed by a former colleague named Clara. She is currently an English teacher in IES María Guerrero in Collado Villalba, Madrid, Spain. Unfortunately, I don't know her full name in order to give full credit. The activity was originally designed to be completed as a group speaking activity, but I decided to adapt it as a reading activity in smaller groups (2–3 students), which competed with each other to solve the mystery first.
After printing the original pdf, I cut out several copies of all six character descriptions as shown below. (You see that the creator of the activity used her own name. However, I'm not sure if the last name shown is her real one.) It is good to have about three copies of characters for every group of students.
Then, I cut out part of the police report as shown below. This served as the final clue that groups received after reading the information from all six characters and filling in the provided chart. The rest of the print-out wasn't needed, so it went to the trash.
To begin the activity, I wrote the first part of the police report on the board, "At 10:35 the headmaster, Eduardo Sanz, has been found lying dead in his office." I then explained to students that there were six possible suspects and that they had to solve the murder mystery. Then, I explained to them the details of the activity.
First, each group received a blank chart from the print-out and one character card that they had to read. Then, they had to write information on the chart that they had read on the character card. In the meantime, I walked around with additional copies of the character cards so that when the groups finished with one character, they could trade with me to read about another character. I also had copies of the final clue on hand. Once a group finished with all six characters, they showed me their completed charts, and then I gave them a copy of the final clue, which helped them to solve the mystery. On the bottom of the charts, there were questions that they had to answer regrading who they thought the murderer was. Below is a picture of a completed chart.
After a determined amount of time, depending on the length of the class period, I told everyone to stop working. Several groups were finished by then. I then took the time to ask each group who they thought the murderer was and why. (At this time, you could even fill in a chart on the whiteboard with the class as a whole.) After that, I revealed who the murderer was (Manuel, the history teacher). The group to finish the quickest with the correct answer was the winner. Below is the full printable pdf. There are also many free murder mystery activities online that may be adapted similarly.
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