Murder or Accident | Claim, Reason, & Evidence Writing | Argumentative Paragraph

Help your students practice identifying evidence, creating a claim, and writing an argumentative paragraph with this murder mystery activity. Students will work in small groups to read a story about two 7th grade best friends who love playing video games, riding the school bus together, eating junk food, and listening to music. The story ends with the death of one of the characters. Then, students will collaborate with their partners to write a paragraph that defends their opinion about whether or not the main character's death was a murder or an accident.

If there's time at the end of class, the teacher can extend the activity by asking students to present their case to the classroom in a mock "courtroom." Then, a jury of students can vote for the best case.

The paragraph writing portion of the activity includes a graphic organizer with several categories: topic sentence (claim), two concrete details (evidence), four commentary statements, and a conclusion sentence.

This 8.5 x 11 in pdf can be printed in black and white.

Love this CER practice activity? Check out...

• CER Hummus Mystery Writing Activity - Your students will enjoy solving a fun mystery that takes place in a school cafeteria and involves missing food.
• Case of the Missing Hardware Mystery - This small down robbery will captivate your students' attention!
• Lunch Box Mystery - A student's day goes awry when he is assigned the classroom duty of delivering lunch boxes to the lunchroom. When the lunch boxes disappear, his classmates and teachers are upset. Your students will need to help him solve the case.
• Growing BUNDLE of Mysteries - This collection of stories will continue to grow over time. Each printable mystery contains CER writing prompts.

What teachers are saying...

❤ "The title ALONE had my students hooked! The CONVERSATIONS and DISCUSSIONS that followed were AMAZING! My students LOVED this activity!"

❤ "I left this with a sub, and when I came back my students asked me if we could do another one! I will definitely look for more of these. Very engaging."

❤ "My students loved trying to figure out what really happened between the characters and some had very lively discussions trying to argue their case! Great activity!"

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