Murder mystery KS2 literacy workshop/lesson resources

[PoptartPoptart]

Has anyone done this, or does a thing even exist?
Yr6 need inspiration for a creative writing task and I seem to remember reading somewhere about a lesson where you turn the classroom into a mini crime scene and a whodunnit scenario that they have to solve. Thought it may inspire their writing.
Obviously not too gory or anything, I don’t want to give them nightmares!

We did something similar in our school. The teachers made an almighty mess in the classroom, chairs tipped over, pen pots knocked down, and left some 'clues' lying around pointing to different members of staff who could have been the perpetrator (all were in on it) The children had to figure out who the 'culprit' was and interview each person. They wrote newspaper articles about it afterwards. It did seem to really inspire them, they even continued investigating during luch by spying on the caretaker (who was deliberatly lurking about looking shady.) There was some really good work produced!

We did this, but with an obvious answer (a witch's leg sticking out of the classroom oven).

A secondary school I worked in did a really good one, including interview tapes with SLT. I can't remember what was stolen, but the caretaker dunnit (had removed whatever it was with his site buggy).

I've used one aspect of a murder mystery for an interview lesson: just used chromatography to see which pen wrote the kidnap letter.

Both of those sound fab! Did you make the scenarios/props yourselves or did you use any online resources?

You can play Alibi.
There's also a really good set of resources on Teachers Pay Teachers , a whole book full of scenarios that you can adapt as necessary. I can't remember the seller but I paid £2.50 and it's worth its weight in gold. The kids love it

For journalistic writing in Year Six, we linked to our WW2 topic. The children (reporters) were instructed in their task by their editor (me in a hat) and sent off to interview an air raid warden (me in another hat), the matron at the hospital (my TA in an apron) and looked through a folder of photos from the ‘picture editor’. Our school was built on a bomb site, so it was a great learning experience as they suddenly realised that the references and pictures were all of our local area. Fantastic writing!