Two-Minute Mysteries

Looking for a fun and unique way to have students work on their critical thinking and logic skills, with a little deductive reasoning built in?  These two-minute mysteries from Mystery Digest might do the trick.

The stories are designed to be read and solved in less than two minutes, and these short mysteries will test students reading comprehension (or listening, if you read them aloud) and then encourage them to think critically about the facts given to quickly solve the case.  None are designed to be tricky, and all the cases can be solved based only on the facts given.

There are several ways you might use these in class.  They could be part of a different warm-up exercise to change the routine a little in a math class to test logic.  Use them as part of a unit on mystery and detective stories in your reading or English class.  They could be templates in a creative writing class on writing short, concise stories packed with information.  Just make them a fun group activity, seeing how each student group arrives at their conclusions, and if they are different.

The mysteries are divided into both easy to solve and medium difficulty stories, but they should really only be used in middle school or above (grades 6-12).  If your students enjoy these, you might also want to try both the logic puzzles available and the “Case Files of Detective Nose” for some more short cases.