Murder Mysteries and Evolution

In this lesson, which I would recommend for the 7th grade living environment class, the students will learn about natural selection, the explanation for survival of certain individuals based on phenotype. As before, my goal for this lesson is to lecture less and get the students involved more. I had some trouble coming up with a hands-on activity for this lesson, so I looked on the internet for some ideas. I found a cute activity to do with the students that gets them out of their seat to model natural selection. I hope to do this by having students act out a murder mystery. This activity is adapted from https://stao.ca/marshmallows-and-murder-2-hands-on-activities-for-teaching-evolution-first-published-dec-7-2015/. 

MS-LS4-6. Use mathematical representations to support explanations of how natural selection may lead to increases and decreases of specific traits in populations over time.

The activity is called “The Murder Handshake.” You will need cue cards. One cue card will say “detective”, one will say “murder”, and the rest will say “potential victim.” 

1. The student who receives the “detective” card will tell the class that they are the detective.

2. The student who receives the “murder” card must not tell anyone that they have that card. On the card, the trait of the people they will “murder” will be written out. This can be based on the class demographics. Maybe you have a lot of kids with curly hair, maybe you have a few kids with blonde hair-- be specific with the trait that the kid has to murder.

3. The students who receive “potential victim” must not tell anyone that they have that card. These are the students (if they have the specific trait) who the murderer will “murder”.

4. The teacher must call out the “murder weapon” handshake. It could be to squeeze the hand during the handshake, it could be to push the hand towards the victim during the handshake-- all as long as the handshake is different than a normal handshake. The students can now walk around the room and give each other handshakes.

5. The victims must go stand in the front of the room.

6. The detective must try to figure out who is the murderer.

Once the game is over, it is time to discuss the parallel between this game and natural selection. The people who aligned with the trait on the card would not have been evolutionarily fit to survive in that habitat or ecosystem. This would mean that other populations had a better fitness for that area. This uses mathematical representations based on the students being removed from the pool of students. The population of students decreased based on “mutations” or different phenotypes of the population.

We can then have a discussion about this picture, as it relates to the activity.

REFLECTION:

This was a hard topic to come up with a hand-on activity myself for. Evolution is not my strong suit-- the rest of biology is. It was something that I was never that interested in. I am going to have to learn to get over that because it is important for my students to learn for the regents and college (if they become biology majors). Despite my own lack of interest in the topic of evolution, this is a very cute, hands-on activity that I think my students would love. Anything that gets them out of their chairs, plus prefacing it with “murder mystery”-- they will love it. It is a break from monotonous lectures. I will have to do some research on other hands-on activities that I can carry out in the evolution unit!