We were so lucky to have Mr Bates, a forensic scientist, at The Abbey for two days this week. He was entertaining and very informative about his career working at crime scenes. He was very impressed with how the children worked together solving the crime and I have enclosed a paragraph of the email he sent to me. The detailed report about the day has been written by James Hattan.
What a marvellous school! I thought all the classes I worked with showed excellent manners and great enthusiasm and creativity – bombarding me with ideas about what had happened in the crime. I was struck by the very effective way they worked in teams, sharing tasks very well and talking to each other about their findings – crime investigation really does require cohesive teamwork! I must say that the fact that the children were such good team workers reflects very positively on the ethos of the school and is a great credit to the staff.
On the evening of Sunday 12th November some robbers broke into the Abbey School and stole some very expensive computers. The police have three suspects and Year Six was called in to find out who it was. As we entered the hall, we saw a dummy with bruises on his head lying unconscious on the floor in the corner. We all sat down and were told what we were going to do, by a real forensic scientist! Next we were put into our groups. We learnt how to do all the things that the police do to find out who did the crime including; checking for blood on clothes, checking their handwriting and the ink of their pens and putting together a smashed brake light of a car. By lunchtime we knew that Davie Davies and Jackie Jackson were behind the crime but we still had two mysteries to try and solve, how did they get in through the window without smashing it? and who was the 10 year old boy, Jake, who lied to the police?
After lunch, we did an awesomely fun fingerprint competition and then learnt about evidence from mobile phones. We checked Jackie Jackson’s deleted emails and found some very interesting information. It turned out that the cleaner had let them into the building! Although we had all this evidence of who did the crime, we still had to be one hundred percent certain, so we went to Court. Milly played the judge and had to put on a really funny wig!
I was a member of the jury and we had to vote who was guilty and who was innocent. We decided that Jackie Jackson and Davie Davies were guilty and would go to prison for 10 years. After much questioning, we finally found out who Jake was as well, it turned out he was Jackie Jackson`s brother!
We had such a fun experience and I loved being a forensic scientist for the day!
