♪♪ ♪♪ >> Thompson: Several dots of blood are near the body, forming a line that leads to the roadside.

>> Huber: It's all about the problem-solving skills, which is something that students, especially in middle school, need to start developing in order to get through middle school, in order to get through high school, and then go on to college or career.

>> Lefer: A terrible crime has been committed, and it's up to us... >> Kubrick: It's always fun, and it's what I look most forward to in this class.

>> Samantha: History is just, like, really interesting when you don't know what it is until you find out.

>> Lefer: Learn more.

Go for it.

>> Miles: The first letter says, "Watch out."

In the first week, we taught them a little bit about being a detective, and, working as teams and talking about it, they were able to figure out who the perpetrators were.

For you three to confess.

Great idea.

>> Pelullo: It really does highlight the real world.

We always like to show the CSI shows and things like that, just to kind of show them that that's really not what goes on.

Things aren't solved in 24 hours.

They're not even solved in 48 hours.

>> Beatty: This week on "Classroom Close-up, New Jersey," students solving dastardly deeds.

After decades of television shows about crime-scene investigation, the fascinating work of analyzing evidence and problem-solving has made its way into the classroom.

We begin with the murder of Henry Ward.

>> Thompson: There are tire tracks on the unpaved road leading up to and away from the body of Henry Ward, as well as several well-defined footprints.

Several dots of blood are near the body, forming a line that leads to the roadside.

Of the 12 suspect cars, four have noticeable front-end damage consistent with hitting something as large and heavy as a person.

The four damaged vehicles belong to Charles Ward, Mrs. Henry Ward, P.T.

Barnum Jr., the son of Henry's longtime friend, and Anita Goodstory, the woman who reported the incident.

>> Narrator: The story you're about to see is real.

Well, not exactly.

But this CSI-inspired event is.

Actually, the murder mystery these students from seven different schools are trying to solve is based on an actual hit-and-run accident that took place in 1906, killing Henry Augustus Ward, an American naturalist, geologist, and founder of Ward's Science, the company that makes the materials for this exercise.

The students will be using CSI technologies to figure out who killed Henry Ward.

>> Huber: It's all about the problem-solving skills, which is something that students, especially in middle school, need to start developing in order to get through middle school, in order to get through high school, and then go on to college or career.

>> Narrator: Lisa and her colleagues from the Frankford Township School District plan this event where students are learning how to do blood typing, fingerprinting, and hair and footprint analysis.

>> Thompson: And the impression itself right now doesn't look like a whole lot, but you'll see that once the compound sets this afternoon and we remove it, it's going to make a very clear impression in the plaster.

And these impressions, basically, that they're making right now are from the suspects.

>> John: It's kind of cool when you're, like, taking it out of the dirt and then you're cleaning it off to see what it actually, like, looks like.

>> Meyer: Okay.

Lift it up carefully.

The students today have been learning how to identify fingerprints, and now, as an activity, they're making their own fingerprints.

They're learning how to dust for fingerprints and how to lift a fingerprint.

>> Melissa: Right now, we are analyzing hair on our victim to see who committed the murder, and we're just trying to find who did it.

>> Huber: Drop a few drops on the paper and then start walking and let's see the shape that the blood makes while you're walking.

♪♪ >> Erik: We're trying to decide how the blood spatter looks when you're walking with the blood dripping from, like, your hand.

>> Nicholas: This is the crime scene, and if you look in this, uh, more smaller image, you can see these blood drops.

They're either leading towards the body or away from the body.

I'm not sure yet.

But that's what we're doing with what Erik explained before.

>> Narrator: Professionals from the community were also invited to lend their expertise to the students.

Luty: Males have testosterone, and females have estrogen, and the estrogen and testosterone foster part of the shaping of the skull, so we have... We brought a box of real bones and tried to demonstrate some of the characteristics to discerning whether it was a male, female, whether there was a disease process that was present at the time of demise and/or during their lifespan.

>> Young woman: This is the femur.

>> Luty: When we told the students that these were real bones, some were excited, some were a bit intimidated, some came up and started handling the bones right away.

Very inquisitive and appropriately so, because this is really about them.

>> Jackson: When we do get somebody into an autopsy suite that we are basically going to find out how they died.

I think it's great that the teachers get together and they basically teach everybody what really goes on.

It starts from the investigation, and they really get, basically, opinions.

And I feel that when you do these for the students, I can tell, even with working with some of them, how they just look at you, not so much in awe but just listen to what you say.

So if you try to think in your mind, like, why would someone obviously harm somebody and then what would the motive be?

>> Huber: It's not only helping science, but I think it's helping language arts.

I think it's helping math.

If you look at our core content standards, I mean, now, even in science and social studies, students are being put through rigorous reading tasks and writing tasks, so this is combining everything together.

>> Narrator: So the only question left is, "Who killed Henry Ward?"

>> Young woman: P.T.

Barnum.

>> Huber: P.T.

Barnum.

And when I was in there before, surveying all the kids, they all had the right answer, so they were able to take the information that they got today to arrive with the right answer, which is exciting.

I don't necessarily get hands-on with every single day.

I'm not a science teacher.

So to be able to take that subject area and bring my expertise to the table also was a lot of fun.

Thanks again for coming.

>> Beatty: It's the kind of hands-on activity that gets kids excited about learning.

For our next crime scene, we're going back even further into the past during a pivotal moment in our nation's history.

To the untrained eye, these objects may appear to be simple historical artifacts, but in actuality, they're evidence -- evidence of an infamous crime against our nation that took place over 230 years ago -- a crime that these students hope to solve.

>> Lefer: And it's up to us, the HCSI team, to figure out what that crime is.

We're currently exploring the American Revolution, the events from essentially British taxation to the Battle of Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris.

So the lesson the students went through today was called an HCSI, a historical crime-scene investigation.

What this entailed was essentially the students would go around the room and look for pieces of evidence about a historical crime, and the goal is to determine what the crime was and, more importantly, how it fits in with what they're learning about in the Revolution.

You and your group on your evidence sheets have five pieces of evidence that you're going to uncover from the evidence collection scattered around the room.

Get started.

Go!

>> Boy: Big old zipper boots.

>> Man: Big zipper.

Yeah.

There you go.

Let's see what you got in there.

>> Boy: Oh!

>> Man: [ Chuckles ] >> Noam: There's something in the boot?

>> Man: Ah.

I guess you got to be pretty thorough, huh?

>> Noam: Some key pieces were the boot with the map inside and also the -- There was a piece of paper with some coding or, like, numbers on it, which was really important and cool.

>> Man: So, what are you guys looking at right here?

>> Boy: United States passport.

>> Man: Every time you go in, they stamp it, right?

So probably important to know how many times.

How many times does it have stamped?

>> Boy: One.

>> Man: One, yeah.

>> Boy: Three, four, five.

'Cause he probably was one of, like, the representatives to the British.

>> Man: Could be.

>> Lefer: So the students got to see a lot of different artifacts while they did this.

They had an old boot with plans about West Point stuffed in the boot.

They had a blank piece of paper which had invisible ink written on it, and the students had to use a UV light to figure out what it said.

I had a picture frame with Peggy Shippen in it, an Alexander Hamilton quote, a chain link.

There are a lot of different objects that went along with this lesson.

>> Olivia: Hey, Sarah.

>> Sarah: Hello.

>> Olivia: Do you have number 19?

>> Man: So, you guys didn't look at every piece yourselves, right?

>> Both: No.

>> Man: You looked at some of it?

>> Both: Yeah.

>> Man: And now the goal is, like, some of the things you looked at, you share, and some of the things you looked at, you share?

>> Olivia: Mm-hmm.

>> Man: So that kind of helps the collaboration process.

>> Kubrick: Also, the spies -- maybe look up John Anderson -- who he was and what did he do.

I like the investigation part of it and trying to put the pieces of information together to find out what is happening.

>> Man: Tell me why you guys came back over to check this one out.

>> Young woman: So, we came to this one because of, like, the evidence that we had before.

One of them was a love letter, and, like, he's clearly -- Like, he's writing something or just finished writing.

>> Young man: I think that's the legend or the key.

>> Daniel: The reason that we're looking more closely at this one is because it's giving us many things we're going to need.

For example, it's giving us a date.

It's giving us a place.

>> Lefer: I think this lesson is pretty effective due to the fact that, first, you have this cooperative reliance on your peers to help solve a problem.

Secondly, there's a crime.

It's a mystery.

Kids love crime.

Kids love mysteries, so they want to know the ending of it.

It's like a good movie.

>> Olivia: My guess is treason, so maybe Benedict Arnold or something along those lines.

>> Lefer: Today I want to go over what I like to call The West Point Plot.

>> Beatty: So, here's how it happened.

Benedict Arnold, an American general during the Revolution, didn't feel like he was getting his due props.

Unhappy at work led to unhappy at home, so Arnold's wife, Peggy Shippen, reached out to her dear friend, British superspy John André.

Together, Arnold and André hatched a plot to let the American fort at West Point fall into British hands.

The caper was foiled, however, when André got caught with the plans in his boot.

André was hung for his crimes while Arnold and Shippen ran away.

>> Lefer: And that's the end of the story, so it brings up the question, "Who is our villain here?"

There are a couple of big questions that the students are tasked with answering.

>> Samantha: All three "loyalists" were a huge part of it 'cause each one of them could have said no.

>> Sachin: There wasn't really a villain because it also depends on perspective.

From the British perspective, John André was a hero in that he died helping his country, and from the Colonists' standpoint, all three were villains.

>> Lefer: Should Americans ever put themselves above their country?

This is a tough question.

It's one that is not easily answered.

It's really great because there is no clear-cut answer here, so I get a variety of responses.

Some students think we have to stand firm with America and we have to be Americans and that before anything else, and we have other students who say, "Well, family is more important, and if our country is getting in the way of our family, then we have to choose sides."

Come on in, girls.

Make sure you sit with your group, okay?

>> Kubrick: We've done the HCSI before, and it's always fun, and it's what I look most forward to in this class.

>> Samantha: History is just, like, really interesting when you don't know what it is until you find out.

>> Lefer: I spent a lot of time gathering the artifacts for this.

I went to a lot of different stores.

I even drove up to West Point and Tarrytown and Tappan, New York, to film on site where these things happened to introduce the activity to the kids, so it took me a long time to do.

>> Daniel: I don't know any other teacher who would write an entire letter in invisible ink for one lesson.

Like, that's a really good teacher.

>> Lefer: This is not my first time on "Classroom Close-up."

Back in 2013, I was a student teacher at Burlington City High School, and my cooperating teacher, John Russell, was the Humanities Teacher of the Year for New Jersey, and he was nice enough to let me take an active role in his lesson.

The most valuable thing I learned about teaching from Mr. Russell was that you have to engage the students in ways that are different.

You have to do things that hook the students and get them excited to walk in the door and learn.

So if you can do that, the students are going to learn.

They're going to have fun doing it.

>> Shabo: My Yankees poster!

>> Beatty: Coming up, the case of the missing Yankees poster.

But first, we're taking a look back at how the education community faced the challenges of learning during the COVID pandemic.

It's our latest installment of "Making the Grade."

>> Skomba: In the project, we asked you guys to think about what the world is going to look like in 30 years.

♪♪ >> Flakker: For this project, we asked students to think about one problem that they think will still exist in 2050.

>> Skomba: And just be able to have, like, a working knowledge of an entire narrative and to use that to better predict the future.

>> Flakker: For some students, they focused on disease and pandemics.

For others, they focused on systemic racism, and they had to figure out what could prevent that issue from still occurring in 2050.

>> Selina: Going, like, vegan is a lot better of an option for the environment because there's so much carbon emissions from animals and farms.

>> Skomba: This project not only had them kind of recall and reflect on the course narrative but had them orientate themselves in the present to better predict the future.

>> Christian: Now we're realizing that pandemics like these -- they can come out of nowhere.

Obviously, we've had it in the past, but, like, the scientists now -- they're really focused on preparing for whatever could come next.

>> Flakker: I think that it was nice to realize that students, when when they have a topic they're interested in and passionate about, they really do put a lot of time and effort into planning what they put out there into the world.

>> Selina: 'Cause George Floyd was kind of like the tip of the iceberg, you know, after, like, all of these racist things that have happened in the past.

People were just furious because, you know, an innocent man was killed.

>> Skomba: Look outside.

Like, look what's going on, right?

Our society changed more in three months that it's done in 10 years, right?

History is happening right before their eyes, so I think it's, like, clicking now more than ever.

♪♪ >> All: You're watching "Classroom Close-up."

♪♪ >> Narrator: Most mornings at Shoemaker Elementary are pretty much what you'd expect -- students strolling into their classrooms in an orderly manner.

On this particular morning, there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary except for one thing.

>> Miles: Someone took Miss Shabo's poster -- her Yankees poster.

>> Sam: Miss Shabo?

>> Shabo: Yeah, Sam?

>> Sam: I just looked over there, and I saw your poster missing, and I was wondering if you took it down or something like that.

>> Shabo: Oh, my gosh!

[ Students murmuring ] My Yankees poster!

[ Indistinct conversations ] My Yankees poster!

>> Narrator: For these students, it was a discovery that would forever hone their sense of right and wrong, cause and effect, and justice.

>> Miles: It is time for you three to confess.

>> Narrator: So what's really going on here?

Well, it's all staged for the benefit of the students participating in a mock crime-scene investigation.

>> Caleb: I'm just going to confess now.

I watch a lot of "CSI" with my parents.

♪♪ >> Miles: CSI, crime-scene investigation, is an opportunity for students to have fun while they are applying the 21st-century Common Core standards as far as teamwork and brainstorming to figure out who the perpetrators are in a crime.

At the crime scene, what were some of the things that we found?

>> Caleb: I believe that they were trying to teach us that you have to look at the clues.

Don't judge someone by what they are.

Judge them by the clues that they give you of who they are.

>> Miles: The first letter says, "Watch out.

The 4th-grade detectives are hot on our trails."

>> Elizabeth: The people that stole the poster did not like the Yankees.

They liked the Phillies.

♪♪ >> Miles: And on the tissues there were something that looked kind of like, yeah, like lipstick prints.

In the first week, we taught students about what does it mean?

What does CSI mean?

What does it mean to be a detective?

How do you develop your observational skills?

So we taught them a little bit about being a detective.

And then the second week was the crime scene, and they had to apply everything they had learned the previous week.

>> Elizabeth: Someone trashed our gym, basically, and there was napkins, and they had lip prints on them.

>> Miles: You are going to look at this lipstick print and you're going to see which lipstick prints out of the samples looks most like the evidence.

>> Caleb: You could tell someone by something as small as their handwriting, something as small as their lip print.

We were basically learning how to do that.

And with the handwriting, we looked at how much pressure they put on it, how they dotted their "I's."

Some people didn't even dot them.

Seriously.

That was like the first thing I learned when I was in kindergarten -- how to your "I's."

>> Miles: This has samples, handwriting samples, from all the possible people who stole Miss Shabo's Yankees poster.

>> Narrator: After weeks of learning how to analyze clues that included everything from invisible ink to coded messages to animal fur -- Seriously, they were really working from a clever and elaborate storyline -- the students narrowed down suspects and, for many, confirmed suspicions.

>> Elizabeth: It's either 13 or 4.

>> English: Does that "the" look like -- [ Indistinct conversations ] Oh, perfect.

That's a good match.

Wow.

>> Miles: And working as teams and talking about it, they were able to figure out who the perpetrators were.

>> English: I'm just going to step out real quick, but, uh, I should be back.

>> Caleb: You wouldn't want to be standing in the room while they're figuring out if you stole something or not.

You did it!

>> Hoeldtke: Why did we do it?

Well, generally, around here in South Jersey, we are Phillies fans.

>> Girl: We were looking at samples of handwriting, and there was -- Mr. English was definitely one of them.

>> Girl #2: Also found out the pets -- the horse, the cat, and the dog -- and you all have those pets.

>> Miles: The storyline was that the teachers had gathered here at nighttime.

They'd brought all their pets -- their dogs or cats and horses -- and they had been talking about classroom displays.

And someone brought down Miss Shabo's poster, and it never got back.

I think we should -- we should reunite Miss Shabo with her Yankees poster.

>> Shabo: Yay!

[ Cheers and applause ] >> Cioffi: I hope they come away with, number one, saying it was fun and exciting.

It's always great when kids are invigorated and excited and motivated to do things.

That's -- That's wonderful.

So I think they did come away with that from this activity.

And, also, our goal when we initially started this was to challenge some of our students and focus on some of those higher-level skills -- working together and what those attributes are that we need to carry us through to adulthood.

[ Cheers and applause ] >> Beatty: In our final story, forensic-science students use higher-level skills while gaining deeper knowledge that may help inspire future careers.

♪♪ >> Young woman: One of our teachers is dead.

One of the other teachers that works with them has apparently killed them.

>> Young woman #2: So, this is the death of Michael Jedwabnik.

He's a band teacher at LHS.

And this is in the streets of New York City, so that's why there's, like, graffiti on the wall and everything.

>> Young woman #3: So, one of our teachers was leaving during lunch, and she was shot three times by another teacher for taking the parking spot.

>> Walmsley: Oh, my gosh!

This was my favorite teacher, and you killed her!

Today is a very exciting day for my forensic-science students.

We have rented out the entire gym so that 15 teams of 6 students can build a 3-dimensional crime scene.

>> Young man: Look at the victim's neck.

It looks bruised.

>> Jade: Forensic science is the most interesting class that our school has to offer.

Everything that we do, whether it's an evidence report, a police report, entomology evidence, blood DNA, cheek cells, hair cells -- anything that we do has been leading up to today, and it's really cool to see how each student could really incorporate that in our crime scene.

>> Young woman: After we're done here, we put the tape around, and we can't let anyone enter the crime scene 'cause that's part of our project.

>> Pelullo: A lot of times kids come into class and they're like, "I hate science.

I don't want to learn science."

But this class makes it a little different, and they really get into it.

>> Carey: I think forensic science attracts students who have a real interest in investigation.

One of the things that's really nice about this course is that it engages students in all of the science and engineering practices found in our standards, as well as some of the cross-cutting concepts where students are looking for patterns and for cause-and-effect relationships that they'd find at a crime scene.

>> Stern: It really helps the students to take the principles of science that they're learning in the classroom and apply it to the real-world experiences that they may become interested in as they decide what their futures are going to look like.

>> Young woman: So the electrical fire is to kind of throw people off to what the true cause of death is.

>> Young woman #2: So, under the rug right here, we have a cellphone that's planted, and it's the perpetrator's cellphone.

>> Pelullo: The students have a ton of enthusiasm when it comes to this project.

They come up with things that I honestly could never, ever think of.

[ Chuckles ] >> Young woman: Basically, our crime scene takes place at Bane Haunted House, and one of our teachers was found there, and a couple of our other teachers worked there, so it should be interesting to find out who did the crime.

>> Young man: It's going to be hard to determine what is actual evidence and what is just props for the haunted house.

>> Young woman: Yes.

>> Walmsley: It has to be a solvable crime scene.

They need to have three pieces of evidence, physical evidence, minimal.

They need to have at least two suspects.

And there has to be testimony sort of throwing both of those individuals under the bus and putting them up as suspects.

>> Young woman: So, right now, I'm putting hair on the hand because the victim actually had hair as he, like, pulled it from the perpetrator.

>> Walmsley: The evidence has to be put in there such that it's usable.

For example, shoe prints -- They can put a bloody shoe print at the crime scene.

The blood can be analyzed so it matches the victim.

But the shoe print itself can be matched back to a shoe that belongs to one of the suspects.

Same with DNA.

Same with fingerprints.

So it really has to work.

>> Man: Alright, what do we go?

>> Young man: Basically, we have a drive-by shooting that took place during the teacher's lunch break.

She was identified as Ms. Sejna by the police.

>> Walmsley: The best part today is when the detectives come in and they start firing questions, because I talk to the detectives, and I tell them, "Make it hard.

Don't smile.

Put them through their paces."

And they do that.

They're really good at it.

>> Man: That's -- That's her car?

>> Young man: Right.

>> Man: The witness got the plate?

>> Young man: Yes.

>> Man: Did he run the plate?

>> Man #2: So, who shot -- the driver or the passenger?

>> Man: She turns like this and then "Boom, boom, boom"?

>> Young man: No, no.

She's like -- >> Man: And she gets shot in the back like this?

>> Young man: No.

Chest.

>> Man: In the chest.

Okay.

>> Pelullo: We really try to give them the most real-life application, and having the Livingston Police Department right across the street really helps with that.

>> Drucks: It's a great program.

We come over now three to four times throughout the year -- you know, talk to the kids about fingerprints and DNA and then show them how we do fingerprinting.

Then they come over to the police station and I show them our fingerprint machine and how we roll fingerprints on people that we arrest so they can see how the fingerprints get into the system.

We did not have this when I was in high school, so I think it's awesome.

>> Young woman: We're looking at evidence.

We're trying to mark down all the evidence that we can and document it.

>> Young woman #2: We have gloves for picking up evidence.

We have bags to put them in.

>> Walmsley: They're going to swap crime scenes, so the teams will walk into a completely novel crime scene, and they have the opportunity to solve the crime.

>> Ryan: First, for the gun, I'm just going to measure the distance between the body and the gun.

We have a few hours to process the scene that we're assigned, and then we will take all the information, the pictures, the evidence, and we'll work in forming a document.

>> Walmsley: They have to explain, based on all the evidence, based on all the testimony that they've carefully documented, who might have committed that crime.

They always solve the crimes.

>> Young woman: Guys, guys, guys, there's a fingerprint on the belt!

>> Young woman #2: Hey!

>> Beatty: That's all for now.

We hope you enjoyed watching, and we invite you to discover more by visiting our web site, classroomcloseup.org.

We'll be back with another episode next week, so please join us again on "Classroom Close-Up, New Jersey."

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