Grade 9 students at Lower Canada College in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (NDG) are learning science by solving a crime. For about a decade now, science teachers at LCC have put together a fake crime scene and used it as a teaching tool.
“We developed plot lines, storylines for all the teachers. The staging of the crime was set up by teachers and myself. We get a makeup artist for the victim. There’s a lot involved,” said lab technician Ron Skrovaneck.
The kids do realistic crime scene analysis and detective work. All the students get specific roles in the investigation.
“Each team has their job. There’s the job of the hair team that takes the samples they found at the crime scene,” said student Mattie Cukier, who is one of the detectives.
The suspects are all the school’s science teachers, and the detectives interrogate them to try to find the truth.
“We’ve caught a few teachers lying because some of their stories and alibis don’t match up,” Cukier told Global News.
Part of the program sees the students learn about crime scene investigation from real police officers. A crime scene specialist from the Montreal police taught them about fingerprinting and footprint analysis.
“The whole idea is a fantastic idea,” said Aaron Dove, a certified forensic identification assistant with the RCMP who taught the students about DNA analysis and more.
Students say they enjoy the exercise and how hands-on it is.
“I think it’s something really interesting that opens our eyes if we want to do something like that in the future,” said student Matthew Anzarouth.