I taught small groups of students on an online platform called Outschool. My classes were detective mysteries that focused on reading comprehension and critical thinking. They helped students build speaking and listening skills as well as social skills through active discussions.

My students really got into finding clues and figuring out who the culprit was. I sometimes had students who had just woken up or who were not particularly interested in taking a class. I could see the moment they started engaging with the mystery and began to enthusiastically participate. They had so much fun that they did’t even realize that they were building new skills.

I wrote the mystery stories and used Canva to build a visual world for the students to explore. All of the visual designs were compiled in Google Slides with interactive elements. I let the students make choices about what we would look at next and they guided us through the mission. We came up with all kinds of theories and we talked about who might have motive. I always asked them to explain their reasoning for the conclusions they reached.