Harry Potter Murder Mystery Night

This post is a little late, but this Halloween I went to the best event I have been to in a very long time. A prior UNBC Elementary Education student hosted a Harry Potter themed murder mystery night at her house on Halloween weekend. One of my best friends and I dressed up as Fred and George Weasley (Ron Weasley's prankster twin brothers) and acted like the twins all evening, with accents and all. I had a lot of fun acting and staying in character all night as we tried to figure out 'who done it.'

My friend and I as Fred and George Weasley. We bought orange wigs and cut them so that our hair looked like the twins' hair in the movies. We also coloured made our faces a little pale, put on lots of blush, added freckles, and painted our eyebrows orange.

It would be fun to adapt a murder mystery to a classroom setting or to write my own murder mystery for my students. I could see older students (grades 4+) enjoying this drama activity. I think it would work great in place of a school play perhaps because students would be able to prepare for their role and then could demonstrate skills that I would need to assess them on to meet drama PLOs. A classroom murder mystery would also benefit students who are nervous performing in front of others and feel more comfortable performing in front of their peers. The only thing is that the content would need to be age-appropriate for the maturity level of the class. Maybe instead of a 'murder' mystery, it could be a different type of mystery, as well, such as 'who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?'