How to Get Away with Murder Part 3: Using Murder Mysteries to Develop Claims & Arguments

What's better than a murder mystery? A real-life mystery about a murder mystery writer! Edgar Allan Poe's death is still a mystery to this day, and as the father of the detective story, nothing is juicier than the tale of his untimely demise.

Last time, we focused on inferencing and citing evidence in literature. This week, we're looking at informational text and argumentative writing. There are so many ways to teach this lesson. This is another collaborative activity; however, if you wanted to adjust this up, it'd be really easy to turn this into a mini-research project. It really depends on what you want to get out of the lesson and what grade level you are teaching.

Optional: Teaching the Paragraph Structure Pre-Lesson

This really is just the prelude to the lesson. If you work with middle school or early high school, you probably want to focus on teaching paragraph structure with this lesson. I use the OREO paragraph structure to give them a guideline to work with. Then I model with a clip from The Daily Show about going back to school during the COVID pandemic. You could use any short Youtube video that expresses a clear opinion; I choose this video because it was timely and Trevor's funny.

This is all just upfront practice. If your students have already learned how to construct a claim, most of this could be skipped, and you could just jump into the Edgar Allan Poe mystery.

Reading Informational Text to Investigate Poe's Death

The short version of this lesson can be completed in one or two classes. I have done this lesson two different ways before, but both were group activities. When I taught this lesson in middle school, I assigned groups a specific theory about Poe's death to investigate. On the high school level, I jigsaw the theories and have them debate what they discovered.

For both versions, I only give my students two texts. One text is a Smithsonian article about Poe's death. I abridge it and only include the details about Poe's final days — not the theories. The second text is a short (one or two paragraph) description of a possible cause of death. I mostly use sources like WebMD and the Edgar Allan Poe Society website (but all the work is already done if you purchase my lesson on TeachersPayTeachers!)

We read the article together and highlight symptoms, circumstances, and clues about his death. I usually encourage wild theories at this point because it hypes the kids up to figure out. Also, I can't say this enough — remind them this is a real mystery and real people are trying to figure it out. They love to give you crazy theories and think they are the first people to ever consider that idea.

Then they read the possible cause of death description individually or in groups (depending on how you decide to run the lesson). Task them with finding similarities between the description of Poe's final days with the description of the cause of death. (Side note: Force them to highlight! You can never ask students to annotate and highlight too much. They need to learn how to do it, and it will save their asses in college.) You can even step it up by having them use two different colored highlighters to highlight clues that support that cause did kill Poe in one color and clues that suggest that cause didn't kill Poe in another color.

Constructing & Supporting a Claim About Poe's Death

Next, have students apply the OREO structure to the mystery behind Poe's death. Their "opinion" is claiming Poe died of whichever cause they read about. Then have them use quoted evidence from the Smithsonian article and their cause description. Following the OREO format, they should create a concise and convincing paragraph to share with their classmates.

If you jigsawed the activity, they can share their paragraphs in their small groups. If you had them work in groups, they can have a representative from each group share with the rest of the class. Either way, you let the students vote on the most convincing argument. This is great for adding a level of competition and also encourages them to do their best writing. Also, it's an authentic way to encourage them to evaluate each other's writing in a meaningful way. I always congratulate the group that wins by telling them they've solved this century-old mystery 😉.

Extensions & Activities

For upperclassmen or honors students, this is a great topic for a mini-research project. There are so many causes of death for students to research, and the kids tend to really be interested in solving this case. This could even be turned into a research paper; it all depends on how weird you want to get with it and how much time you want to spend on it.

Also, this is a great presentation project. I always feel like students are terrified to talk in front of each other — at least when it's academic. Because students get so passionate about this project, they tend to feel more comfortable talking in front of the class.

What's Next?

Next, we'll look at the OJ Simpson trial next because I mean, why not? We'll focus on using the Simpson case to refute arguments and write counterclaims. When will you see my next post? Probably next week . . . ? Honestly, I'm drowning, guys. I want to spend hours developing content to share with you, but remote learning is just so needy right now.

If you are interested in purchasing this week's lesson on TeachersPayTeachers, you can find it here.