Forensic Fairytales: A Free High School Forensic Science Project
High school forensic science just might be my favorite class to teach. Don’t get me wrong - I love science and can nerd out over the mitochondria and the nervous system and ecological niches all day. But forensics is a special favorite because the projects you can implement into the curriculum are incredibly fun. For the most part, high school students enrolling in forensics are either taking it as an extra elective on top of another science, or have already completed the graduation requirement sciences (biology, chemistry, and maybe physics) earlier in their academic career. On top of typically serving as an elective science, forensics isn’t usually relied on for test scores or a large amount of graduation credits. Sure, we want to keep forensics rigorous and prepare our students for beyond the high school classroom, but we can take a little more wiggle room and creative liberty when planning forensics projects.
One of my absolute favorite projects is my Forensic Fairytales Project. This project, while silly on the surface, actually hits on many of the learning objectives we tackle through the school year. As we move through forensics, I focus in making sure that my students have the principles of crime scene investigation down pat, understand the concepts of class, individual, physical, testimonial, and circumstantial evidence, and develop their critical thinking skills to assess where evidence analysis is credible and when it is not. This project pushes students to apply those skills as they rewrite a classic fairytale in the context of a criminal investigation.
Most of our classic fairytales have some kind of crime or misdeed at the center of the story - Snow White is poisoned, Cinderella is trapped in her home, Sleeping Beauty has been unconscious and hidden. With this project, students choose any classic fairytale of their liking and rewrite that misdeed to include forensic evidence pertinent to the crime. They create visual spreads that include both texts and illustrations to explain the crime, describe the crime scene, provide witness statements, analyze evidence, and a draw a conclusion that is supported by the crime scene and evidence that they constructed. While silly and artsy at first glance, students really need to construct a rock-solid conclusion, so they need to be thorough as they think through how each piece of evidence supports their conclusion, and how character witness statements impact the flow of their fairytale. It’s REALLY fun and my students have loved it year after year. I’m always amazed at the pieces they produce.
If you would like to implement Forensic Fairytales as one of your projects, then this freebie is for you! Click here to download a copy of the assignment sheet that I give my students for this project - I’ve included it as both a PDF and a Google Doc! Have fun with your fairytales!
