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What's Your Alibi?

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A fun lesson plan where students must come up with group alibis and then get examined seperately to see how well they remember and how detailed their alibi was. This lesson works best with classes from 6 to 12 people. For larger classes, this lesson takes a really long time! While theoretically it can be adjusted to students of any lesson, the procedure is a bit confusing so it goes better with older students.

Make up a crime that could have been committed in your town--I like to make them silly so students don't get offended or concerned. Include a limited time frame for when it was committed. For example, I say:
This afternoon, Bayterek (a famous monument in Astana) was stolen by a group of daring criminals. Yulia Smirnova left for lunch from her job at a nearby office building at 12:00 and claims that Bayterek was still there. Azamat Akhmetov planned to visit the monument and reported it missing at 3pm. Sometime between 12 and 3pm, the monument was stolen. All of you are suspects and must come up with an alibi for where you were at those times.

Check that students know 'alibi' and 'suspect' Then put students into groups of 2 or 3 and tell them that they were all together at the time of the crime and they must develop an alibi. Explain that the alibi must be as detailed as possible because each member of the group will be examined individually and the group with the most mistakes or discrepancies is the guilty party.

Give students 10-15 minutes to come up with an alibi and rehearse. Pick a group and ask them to give a very brief summary of where they were i.e. at a restaurant, at school, at home, in London. Then send them out in the hall. The other groups must write down 3 questions about that alibi to ask each member of the group. So if one group says it was at the restaurant, people might ask 'What was the name of your waiter?'or 'What did each of you have to eat?' 'How much was the bill?' and so on.

Now comes the fun part. Bring one member of the group in the hall into the classroom. The rest of the class will now ask their prepared questions and note their answers. This is where you find out who in the class are future CIA inquisitors--some students get really into the role of detective. Once all the questions have been asked, bring another member of the group in and have students ask the same questions, noting any discrepancies from the first member's answers. I.E if you ask what the waiter's name is and the first student says 'Jim' but the second one says 'Bill' make a note of it. Bring in the third member of the group and once again, grill him noting any discrepancies.

Repeat the procedure of getting a brief statement, then coming up with questions and interviewing the students individually and noting mistakes or discrepancies. Once everyone has been interviewed, the class should vote on who is guilty based on how different their alibis were.

Kids and students love this lesson. However I like to put up all the steps in the lesson up on the board so they remember that the point of the exercise is to develop a detailed alibi and remember it. Students can get off-track and start accusing each other or confessing or even coming up with individual alibis instead of group alibis. So I often write on the board:

1. Come up with alibi for the whole group. Where were you, what did you do, details!
2. Give brief statement ex: We were in school.
3. Groups are interviewed individually.
4. Guilty group is the one with the most differences!

Thanks to About.com for this idea.

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