Friends Academy students in Upper School English teacher Leanne Loizides’ 12th grade crime fiction class are currently studying Agatha Christie’s first novel, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles,” from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction after World War I. As an interactive learning experience, the class acted out its own murder mystery. “This is a rigorous, literature-based course,” Loizides said. “They are doing close reading, analysis of language devices, and then looking at the novels themselves as a zeitgeist – how these particular novels reflect the preoccupations and concerns of society in their time.”
Loizides’ immersive murder mystery lesson is also an example of learning through inquiry and dialogue. “This was student-constructed learning,” Loizides said. “The more that you are involved and the more that you are enjoying it, the more that you learn from it.”