The Fun Writing Activity That Gets Middle School Students Hooked

What if your students begged to do another writing activity?

In this episode, Caitlin shares one of her all-time favorite writing lessons—a mystery that transforms reluctant writers into eager detectives. While students think they're solving a crime, they're actually learning one of the most challenging writing skills: using evidence and justification to build a convincing argument.

If your students struggle to explain their thinking or writing feels like a constant battle, this classroom-tested activity is one you'll want to add to your lesson plans.

HERE ARE THE 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:

1. Students learn better when writing feels like a challenge instead of an assignment.

By framing writing as a mystery to solve, students become invested in gathering evidence, defending their ideas, and building logical arguments—without realizing they're practicing essential writing skills.

2. Justification is the skill that transforms average writing into strong writing.

Finding evidence is only half the battle. Students need explicit support in explaining why that evidence matters, and simple sentence frameworks can help them build that confidence over time.

3. Fun activities should always connect back to real writing.

After students complete the mystery, help them recognize that they've just written an argumentative paragraph using the same claim, evidence, and justification structure they'll use in literary analysis and other academic writing.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• The Case of the Stolen Pearls free download: ebteacher.com/pearls
• Free 3-Day Writing Workshop: ebteacher.com/writing-workshop
• EBW (Evidence-Based Writing) Framework
• EB Teachers ELA Portal

MORE FROM EB ACADEMICS

At EB Academics, we believe writing instruction should be engaging, meaningful, and easy to implement.

Our Evidence-Based Writing (EBW) approach gives middle school ELA teachers practical lessons, repeatable frameworks, and ready-to-use activities that help students become stronger writers while making writing instruction more enjoyable for everyone.

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