To celebrate World Book Day, our Year 7 and 8 students took part in a Murder Mystery activity.

When students arrived for their first lesson, they were set a challenge to identify who attempted to murder Mr Gourlay by putting cleaning fluid in his morning coffee.

Students then conducted a variety of tests to gain clues to find out who, out of the five suspects (Mr Cox, Miss Tween, Miss Fenner, Miss Benson and Mr Rogers), attempted the murder. In lessons, students used chromatography of blood samples found on the bottle of the cleaning fluid, took fingerprints, translated a message from German to English and found out the morning location of the suspects by plotting co-ordinates on a map.

The students then wrote a piece of text, which explained who they thought attempted the murder and why. They also had the chance to create their own murder mystery novella using the creative writing techniques they have learnt in their English lessons.

The attempted murder was announced yesterday as Miss Fenner!

English Teacher Miss Tween, who organised the event said: ‘This is the first year the school has organised such a large scale event to celebrate World Book Day. I made the activities cross-curriculum to involve a variety of subjects and enable us to incorporate the activity into lessons and let it run over the course of the day.

‘I think it is really important that we get involved in World Book Day to show students that literacy can be lots of fun. It’s about getting the students involved in texts and reading in way that excites them. They all absolutely loved the activity and were so excited throughout the whole day.

‘Due to the success of this event, I hope to hold something similar again next year.’

Thank you to Miss Tween for a brilliant day and to everyone who helped towards the organisation the event.