I am absolutely a puzzle person. Jigsaw puzzles, Sudoku, logic puzzles. Heck even tweaking a recipe feels like a puzzle to me. So creating a resource that brings a mystery into my classroom just makes sense. I had this idea burning in my brain for such a long time. I started with escape rooms, and then moved into logic puzzles. But I left teaching before ever getting my mysteries in MY CLASSROOM.
Being the “creative” that I am, I couldn’t let this idea go. So I started building these mysteries for YOUR CLASSROOM. And I’ll admit I was a little surprised that both students and teachers love these mysteries as much as I do. I shouldn’t have been that surprised though. Puzzles are sort of a personality trait of scientists, right? That’s what we do.
Let me tell you about 5 of my mystery activities and why they’d be great in your classroom if you haven’t tried them yet.
Chemistry Mystery Activities
Chemistry mysteries are still worksheets. I am not going to pretend otherwise, but these are at least fun. Students work through chemistry questions, use their answers to make decisions, and figure out who is responsible for a largely harmless school mystery. (I’m not down with murder mysteries. Too icky for my taste!)
But giving students a reason to care about the answers changes the feel of the activity. Someone stole the school camera, or left a chemical puddle, and now we have a problem to solve. Of course, that’s much more interesting than “complete questions 1 through 10.”
My mysteries use a list of 36 suspects. Usually one is the culprit, and sometimes there are two. Students use the chemistry to narrow the possibilities until they can identify who did it.
You can choose how much acting is involved
Students can role-play the suspects, which adds a fun classroom element. Some teachers print out the suspect cards and put them in lanyards students can wear to help with the role playing. But you do not have to turn this into a whole production! There are print options that let each student have the suspect list and work more calmly or even completely independently if you choose.
That flexibility is useful. You can choose the version that fits your class, your room, and how much energy you have that day. Both versions still ask students to use chemistry to solve the mystery.
You can find these in my Chemistry Mystery Activities collection. Choose a topic your students have already learned so the mystery becomes an opportunity to use their knowledge. In fact, you can get a small sample of my Chemistry Mysteries right here. This is a review of Atomic Theory and Periodic Table Trends. It’s a simple mystery that doesn’t involve all the suspect cards and roleplaying, but it does give you a way to test out the chemistry, and clues!
Reading Electron Configuration and Identifying Elements
In this mystery activity, students read orbital notation electron configuration and identify the element to which it belongs. This on its own is a super boring task. Nobody wants to read electron configurations. Not even me.
But in this case, with each configuration they uncover, they get a clue about who swiped a bicycle from the rack. Answer all the questions correctly, and then a single culprit will be revealed. I would use this after teaching students how to read configurations, when they are ready to apply that skill without me walking through every example. My electron configuration post explains more about how I teach the topic.
Reading Bohr Models
This one is about reading Bohr models, rather than drawing them. That distinction matters! A student might draw a model correctly by following the steps and still struggle to interpret a model someone else has made. I find that more assessments ask students to interpret these diagrams as opposed to drawing them.
The mystery gives students practice using the information in a model to identify what it represents. You can see where they are confusing particles or losing track of what the model shows. I like giving students both kinds of practice. Drawing has its place, but the point is that they can use the representation. You can read more in my Bohr model practice post.
Chemistry Lab Safety
Lab safety can become a list of rules students recite without thinking much about them. And then you get into the lab for the first time to do some “heavy lifting” and all those rules leave brains and turn to dust. A mystery gives students another reason to pay attention to those expectations and file them in their memories.
I’d use an activity like this to reinforce safety knowledge after instruction. It gives us something to discuss, and it lets students practice recognizing the information they need. It does not replace equipment training or demonstrating that they can work safely in an actual classroom. If you are planning your beginning-of-year safety instruction, my lab safety post explains how I build those expectations before students start using the equipment.
Chemical Nomenclature
Naming compounds asks students to make decisions before they start writing. Am I dealing with an ionic compound or a covalent compound? Which rules apply? Do we need to look for a polyatomic ion?
This mystery includes both ionic and covalent nomenclature. It’s 60 questions in total, but you can split them into a 30 question ionic activity and a 30 question covalent activity, if you like to teach them separately the way I do. Each activity has their own culprit, and comes with instructions to make sure that each culprit is in your gameplay. My chemical nomenclature post has more of my teaching approach for nomenclature if you need some help.
Periodic Table Trends
For periodic trends, I want students thinking about nuclear charge and shielding. Memorizing an arrow across the table can get them through some questions, but I want them to understand why the pattern makes sense.
The Periodic Table Trends Mystery gives students another setting in which to use those ideas. The rest of the questions have them apply the trends to specific pairs of atoms, making comparisons. Not simply memorizing minimum-maximum corners of the table.
Tricking Students with Games
There are plenty more mysteries in my catalog, and I’m still creating more. When I was in the classroom, my goal was to get rid of boring old practice worksheets by year 10 of teaching. I wound up leaving B&M teaching after 6 years, but I’m still committed to this goal. Most of my chemistry students were never interested in chemistry, they thought it was too hard, or both. “Tricking” my students into learning using fun games and puzzles was the heart of my classroom, and continues to be the heart of what I do today.
