Transform your end-of-year chaos into captivating learning with “Who Freed the Fish?” This engaging reader’s theater activity is perfect for upper elementary students, turning them into budding detectives. They’ll enhance their reading, writing, and inferencing skills while solving the mystery of the Field Day goldfish. With minimal prep and maximum fun, this activity guarantees a memorable finish to the school year. Say goodbye to boring lessons and hello to excitement and academic growth!
$6.95
Who Freed the Fish??? This fun and engaging end of the year readers’ theater activity is a perfect reading mystery activity for your students! Who Freed the Fish is a super fun reader’s theater script!
In this whodunnit mystery reader’s theater activity, students will learn to become detectives and then use their sleuthing skills to figure out what happened to the Field Day goldfish!
With lots of suspects and circumstantial evidence, the students will have to take good notes, make lots of inferences, and think like real detectives in order to solve the mystery!
This product was created with upper elementary students in mind, but it can definitely be scaled to work with other grade levels as well. So how does it work?
Check out the preview to see the actual teacher’s guide.
The students will take part in a 3-act reader’s theater. There are 19 characters which can be shared or doubled up in order to give every student a part. As the story unfolds, so do the clues. After each act, the students will stop, take notes, and discuss any suspicious activities. The final act reveals whether each character was responsible for the fish fiasco.
How long will this activity take?
Plan on at least a couple hours. Reading the script will take at least an hour or so depending on the fluency of your readers and how well they are paying attention for their lines. Using the additional resources that are included will lengthen the amount of time. The more discussion and detective work the students do, the more fun the activity will be. This activity was designed to take up an entire ELA block of time, however, it can be spread out over a week’s time by completing one act a day. It’s a great spring or end of the year activity!
* If you have completed the other Whodunnits, this version will be about the same length as I try to keep the stories to about the same number of total words.
What’s Included?
Why Should You Use This?
I was inspired to create my first mystery product after hosting a murder mystery party for my own 16-year-old daughter, who is very much into theater. It was said to be the best party ever! I wondered how I could create something similar for students! I modified the format of the clue delivery system to ensure that every clue was revealed to every student, and voila, Who Stole the Turkey was born. Since then, Who Stole Santa’s List, Who Left Us Cupcakes, and now Who Freed the Fish have joined our list of fun classroom Whodunnits.
Happily brought to you by Rachel Lynette and Cassi Noack of Minds in Bloom.
Having the Reader’s Theater is the perfect platform for integrating real academic skills. This activity will feel like a fun day, but not a moment of the day will be wasted!
This product is great because:
~ It’s super engaging
~ It targets real skills to help students grow in reading and writing
~ It helps students enhance their inferencing skills
~ There’s very little prep!
~ If you choose the digital script, along with your projector, you do not have to make a copy for each student. The font is very large so that students can read their lines from across the room.
Want More Mystery Reader’s Theater?
SKU: 6795273
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Jennifer F. –
My students love all of the “Who Dunnit” items from this seller! The stories are engaging and the kids love to try and solve the mystery before the end. The Reader’s Theater aspect helps them work on accuracy, rate and prosody and it requires them to pay attention. The Mysteries are low prep and can be used almost immediately after downloading.
Peace Love Shamrocks –
Thank you! My students loved this resource- it was highly engaging! Great for the end of the year!
ElementaryMel –
My students LOVED this!! They had so much fun the entire week that we did this. All students had parts, so all students were engaged. It was a bit hard for all students to keep up with taking notes since they were trying to look out for their parts coming up and listen at the same time, but this can all be adjusted with giving some pauses throughout the story. LOVED.
Zoe G. –
My students loved this play! They loved how it was a mystery too. We stopped many times, wrote notes and made inferences. Such a fun activity for the end of the year!
Jamie Garrison –
Loved using this the last few days of school. I am always looking for fun things to do near the end of the school year and Reader’s Theaters are always a hit! Making it a MYSTERY Reader’s Theater was just a bonus!
Jodie Kwast –
This resource was very helpful for students to practice their reading skills.