Science Investigation (IPC Investigators Unit): The Case of the Missing Chocolate

A one off lesson planned as an addition to the Investigators IPC Unit. The lesson was designed to be fun, but had a more serious purpose of developing the pupils ability to write conclusions to scientific experiments.

The lesson is based on the premise that the previous night when I got back from the staff meeting someone had eaten my chocolates - I had made a big thing the previous day about the chocolates that my colleague had bought me for helping her with her assembly. I had my suspicions about which member of staff it was but needed proof - the job of the pupils. Pupils do finger print analysis, handwriting analysis, chromatography and DNA barcode analysis to gather evidence and come to a conclusion (justified with evidence) about who stole the chocolate. I did this as a real life investigation with some very willing colleagues. Selected pupils were sent off to obtain fingerprints and alibis from the four suspects and when presented with the evidence our criminal teaching assistant did a great acting job when coming clean! Obviously you don’t need to go this far if you don’t want and you can just do the lesson as it is without basing it in your own school. Wherever possible, I have included Word versions of the files as well as PDFs so that you can customise to suit your own school if you like.

This has everything you need to get going - you will just need to label four different kinds of pen, e.g. whiteboard marker, ink pen, biro & felt-tip.

The resource includes a teacher lead guided group with focused questions and recording sheet. Linked to Science APP Grid.

This lesson was rated outstanding by Ofsted. It can be used across KS2 and would work brilliantly as a fun lesson, observation or as part of Science Week. Enjoy!