Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity

$13.74

Murder at Old Fields contains eight lessons and five lab activities for middle and high school students based on the 1842 double-murder of Alexander and Rebecca Smith at their farmhouse in Old Fields, Long Island. The activity is problem-based learning (PBL) that compels the application of science and is aligned with grade-appropriate NGSS standards. This is an online activity that students access via a web browser on any device connected to the internet including desktops, laptops, tablets, Chromebooks or smartphones.

Number of Licenses Price Per License
1$13.74
2 – 9$11.82
10 – 29$7.01
30 – 89$6.56
90 – 374$5.29
375+$4.40
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Murder at Old Fields® contains eight lessons and five lab activities for middle and high school students based on the 1842 double-murder of Alexander and Rebecca Smith at their farmhouse in Old Fields, Long Island. The activity is problem-based learning (PBL) that compels the application of science through real-world problem solving and is aligned with grade-appropriate NGSS standards. For grades 7-12, community colleges and trade schools. A license allows a single student to access Murder at Old Fields®. If a teacher does not already have a Murder at Old Fields® Teacher's License, the purchase of at least one student license will automatically create a Teacher's License for the teacher. Purchases can be made using a credit card or a school purchase order. Murder at Old Fields® is the first crime scene in the Case History Forensic Science series. (The much anticipated Diablo Highway is the second.) Each of these crime scenes also has real-world labs that can be purchased separately in order to create a blended learning experience for the students.
  • Blood Typing
  • Hair Analysis
  • Fingerprint Analysis
  • DNA Profiling
  • Shoe Impression
Since their release in 2013, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have helped states and school districts in the U.S. to increase student engagement with natural scientific phenomenon at the nexus of three dimensions of learning; Science and Engineering Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas, and Crosscutting Concepts. The challenge for educators is how to present fun and engaging science lab activities that help their students achieve the objectives outlined in the NGSS. Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity is such a lab activity. Choose any of the options below to see how this lab activity aligns with the NGSS. To learn how Murder at Old Fields® meets the standards in your state please contact us.
Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity strongly supports the first dimension in learning specified in the NGSS - Science and Engineering Practices. The eight Science and Engineering Practices identified in the NGSS framework as essential for all students to learn are listed below followed by the specific way in which Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity supports and promotes this practice:
    1. Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering) – The essential question for students conducting the Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity Lab activity is Who committed the crime? In order to answer that question, the students must ask themselves: How can I determine who committed the crime? and then through a series of lessons and lab activities they learn the science, apply the science, gather and interpret data and come to a reasoned determination based on evidence. In Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity, the questions arise from the need to solve a problem.
    2. Developing and using models – One of the key models used by students in Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity is the crime scene map. All the evidence is mapped here which forms the basis for the student's investigation and their resulting determinations. According to the NGSS, a diagram is considered a model. This model can show relationships among variables. In a simple example, what is the relationship between a sample of hair evidence belonging to one of the victims and the location in which it was found?
    3. Planning and carrying out investigations – There are nine engaging lab activities in Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity. Teachers can choose to have students work individually or in groups to encourage collaborative problem-solving.
    4. Analyzing and interpreting data – In all of the Murder at Old Fields® labs, students gather data in the course of their investigation, analyze it and interpret their data. This interpretation becomes the raw material in constructing the narrative of the crime and, ultimately, the arrival at a determination as to who may have committed this crime and how.
  1. Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering) – At the conclusion of the Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity lab, many teachers ask their students to write a report summarizing the results of their investigation including the evidence to support their determinations.
  2. Engaging in argument from evidence – Student-investigators must choose the culprit and then support their conclusion – make their argument – based on the evidence they discovered and analyzed. It is quite common for students in the same class to credibly argue a case that points to different culprits.
  3. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information – Throughout all nine of the lab activities in Murder at Old Fields®, students evaluate the evidence from the crime scene, analyze this evidence in the lab and record this data. This data is compared with data from the control samples and a determination is made as to whom evidence may have originated.
In these ways outlined above, Murder at Old Fields® supports the NGSS dimension in learning for Science and Engineering Practices.
In the Murder at Old Fields® lab activities, the following labs support NGSS Disciplinary Core Ideas:
    1. The Story of the Crime
  1. Blood Typing - PS1.2: Chemical Reactions
  2. Hair Analysis
  3. Fingerprint Analysis
  4. DNA Profiling - LS3: Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits
  5. Shoe Impressions - PS2-3: Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions
Being a Forensic Science Lab Activity, Murder at Old Fields® is a also cross-curricular activity that features science and associated labs from a variety of science disciplines that traditionally have been treated as separate subjects - Chemistry (Blood Typing) and Life Sciences (DNA). Each of these disciplines come together in this activity supporting the NGSS goal of transcending the historical divisions of what were once separate subject areas. This gives students the opportunity to recognize the connection between them through the conduct of the lab activity. The students are also stretched to recognize a historical component to science. The students use the modern tools and techniques of forensics science and apply it to a case from long ago. DNA, for example, is an identification tool unknown at the time of the Smith murders upon which Murder at Old Fields® is based, but is nevertheless applied here by the students as part of this activity.
The NGSS defines crosscutting concepts as those that “unify the study of science and engineering through their common application across fields.” The NGSS Framework recommends that science lessons, labs and activities are embedded with these crosscutting concepts through all grades because they:
  1. Help students better understand core ideas in science and engineering
  2. Help students better understand science and engineering practices
  3. Help to build familiarity with these concepts through repetition in different contexts
  4. Extend their growth in complexity and sophistication across the grades
  5. Can provide a common vocabulary for science and engineering
  6. Are for all students
The NGSS Framework identifies seven crosscutting concepts that bridge disciplinary boundaries. Two of these crosscutting concepts in particular are strongly reinforced in Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity.
  1. Cause and Effect: Mechanism and Explanation
  2. Systems and System Models

1. Crosscutting Concepts - Cause and Effect: Mechanism and Explanation

Cause and effect: Mechanism and Explanation. “Events have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes multifaceted. A major activity of science is investigating and explaining causal relationships and the mechanisms by which they are mediated. Such mechanisms can then be tested across given contexts and used to predict and explain events in new contexts.” In Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity, the effect is the unnatural death of the two victims. Who committed this crime? and How did this happen? are the two guiding questions in the investigation to determine the cause of this effect. To do so, students must engage in a series of scientifically-based lab activities which include:
    1. The Story of the Crime
  1. Blood Typing
  2. Hair Analysis
  3. Fingerprint Analysis
  4. DNA Profiling
  5. Shoe Impressions
Conducting these lab activities in Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity enables students to address the next two questions outlined the the NGSS crosscutting concept of Cause and Effect: moving from How did that happen? toward What mechanisms caused that to happen? and What conditions were critical for that to happen? As specified in the NGSS, for students, the very act of carrying out an investigation, which is the central focus of the Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity lab activities, addresses the core of the crosscutting concept of Cause and Effect.
“When students engage in scientific argumentation, it is often centered about identifying the causes of an effect.”
Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity addresses this as well. In the culminating report, students present their case and supporting data. This compels them to argue from evidence when attributing evidence to an owner. Further supporting the NGSS, solving this case helps students to understand that empirical evidence is required to differentiate between causation and correlation. It is made clear to the student, for example, that evidence found on the victims, is a correlative connection to an individual but is not a causative connection between that individual and the murder of the two victims. Additional corroborative evidence is necessary to prove causation.

2. Crosscutting Concepts - Systems and System Models

The NGSS defines Systems and System Models as: “Defining the system under study—specifying its boundaries and making explicit a model of that system—provides tools for understanding and testing ideas that are applicable throughout science and engineering.” Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity reinforces the crosscutting concept of Systems and System Models. In Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity, the crime scene map becomes an essential model throughout the activity and particularly when students must “Construct and present arguments using evidence to support the claim.” This map supports the following notion articulated in the NGSS:
“In the laboratory or even in field research, the extent to which a system under study can be physically isolated or external conditions controlled is an important element of the design of an investigation and interpretation of results.”
Murder at Old Fields® also helps to reinforce the nature of scientific enterprise which the NGSS recognizes as being essential for every educated citizen. The eight basic understandings about the Nature of Science as outlined by the NGSS are presented below in a matrix that demonstrates the way in which Murder at Old Fields® supports each of these understandings:
Scientific Investigations Use a Variety of Methods
Murder at Old Fields® students use a variety of methods in the lab activities. In the case of the Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity, these include observation, critical analysis, data recording and comparative analysis. Conducting the Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity lab, students use a variety of virtual tools including a microscope, forceps, and duster.
Scientific Knowledge is Based on Empirical Evidence
In Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity, students conduct close analyses and interpretation of data for the evidence and the control samples and accurately record their findings. The students’ determinations as to whom a piece of evidence might be associated with and ultimately who may have committed the crime are based on and supported by evidence – not speculation. In short, students make and defend a claim based on evidence and thereby come to understand the difference between cause and correlation.
Scientific Knowledge is Open to Revision in Light of New Evidence
If the initial analysis of some of the evidence is tending toward a determination, students are compelled to withhold final determination until all the evidence and control samples have been analyzed.
Scientific Models, Laws, Mechanisms, and Theories Explain Natural Phenomena
Students use the map of the crime scene as the framework for the entire lab activity. As the evidence, analysis and determinations construct the narrative of the crime, it must be based cogently within the framework of this primary model.
Science is a Way of Knowing
The determinations arrived at through the conduct of forensic science forms a narrative, an explanation, of the phenomenon that had occurred – the unnatural death of Rebecca and Alexander Smith. Using the modern tools and techniques of today’s forensic scientists, students compare their findings with other class members and with the professional investigators who worked the case in the 1840s.
Scientific Knowledge Assumes an Order and Consistency in Natural Systems
The forensic science labs conducted by students during this investigation reinforces this notion of an order and consistency in natural systems. The nature of fingerprints is such that fingerprints are unique, that they can be systematically identified and do not change over the duration of an individual’s lifetime. This is consistent.
Scientific knowledge is based on the assumption that natural laws operate today as they did in the past and they will continue to do so in the future. (HS-LS4-1),(HSLS4-4)
In Murder at Old Fields® students use the modern knowledge, skills and tools of forensic science and apply them to this criminal case from long ago, 1842. During the conduct of the labs, this assumption is affirmatively reinforced repeatedly: that the natural laws that operate today do so as they did in 1842.
Science is a Human Endeavor
What is particularly beneficial about Murder at Old Fields® is that the notion that science is a human endeavor put to the task of human betterment is strongly reinforced. Here, science can help determine the perpetrators of an horrific act of violence against two innocent human beings. Teachers are encouraged to have students and/or student/groups share their approaches and their findings with the other members of their class. Students do so with written, oral and video presentations.
Science Addresses Questions About the Natural and Material World
The two primary questions posed by the Murder at Old Fields® lab activity are: How did this happen? and Who did it? In answering these questions, students properly learn and apply science.
In regards to the Nature of Science, Murder at Old Fields® does what the NGSS recommends:
“The point is to provide an instructional context that bridges tactics and strategies with practices and the nature of science, through understanding the role of systems, models, patterns, cause and effect, the analysis and interpretations of data, the importance of evidence with scientific arguments, and the construction of scientific explanations of the natural world.”
Murder at Old Fields® begins with what the NGSS calls a phenomenon and proceeds into a deepened engagement and context made possible by “Phenomenon-Based Learning.” As stated in the NGSS: “By centering science education on phenomena that students are motivated to explain, the focus of learning shifts from learning about a topic to figuring out why or how something happens.” In Murder at Old Fields®, the initiating phenomenon is death or, more specifically, a sudden or unnatural death – one that shortens the expected natural lifetime of an individual. This is a suitable phenomenon in the NGSS framework because the anchoring phenomenon is understandable prior to the investigation. Rebecca and Alexander Smith did die in their Old Fields farmhouse, this is fact, but the students must further investigate to discover how, why and by whom. The students do so in an ordered, step-by-step process to determine how this phenomenon occurred. Anchored as it is in this real event, Murder at Old Fields® helps move students away from what the NGSS calls “decontextualized knowledge that students are unable to apply” in other applications. Rather Murder at Old Fields® helps students “build more usable and generative knowledge” - problem-solving techniques that can be applied to other in-depth investigations. The investigation and explanation of an unnatural death and the solving of the crime that caused it is certainly a compelling phenomena that, as it says in the NGSS guidelines, “students find interesting, relevant and consequential” to support their engagement. Because the case of Hazel and Nancy Frome is a real case from history involving actual people and an actual place - this makes it all the more compelling for the students. This becomes the anchoring phenomenon which is followed and closely supported by investigative phenomenon throughout the Murder at Old Fields® lab activities. In these ways and others, Murder at Old Fields® strongly encourages the learning and application of science because it is grounded in phenomenon.
Murder at Old Fields® also strongly supports the notion of “Storylines” as set forth in the NGSS standards.
“A storyline is a coherent sequence of lessons, in which each step is driven by students' questions that arise from their interactions with phenomena.”
Murder at Old Fields®/b> is a narrative that involves real people with real histories, and it presents these in a narrative-based format to the student. Crime scenes themselves are a type of narrative. To determine the “story of the crime,” students use a sense of place, the crime scene, and then construct the narrative of the crime based on the evidence found at the scene. One could say that it is storytelling using space rather than time as its primary dimension of storytelling. Most narratives are told in time sequence - with a beginning, a middle and an end. In the case of Murder at Old Fields®, time is fixed at a single point – Monday, November 14, 1842 – and space is the primary means of telling the narrative. How is the narrative told? By using the scientific basis of phenomenon in order to reconstruct the events that took place and the people who may have been responsible for those events. So, Murder at Old Fields® is not just a series of lessons, it’s an opportunity for the student’s own curiosity and ingenuity to 'build a case' as to who may have committed the crime, very much like an actual forensics investigator. In Murder at Old Fields®, students are prompted to build their case based on their own investigation or that of their group in a coherent series of labs. Their determination will be based on sound science supported by accurate data as they work their way through the lessons and labs. It is the coherence of the student’s storyline that supports the NGSS standards, an evidence-based lab activity that arises from a student’s interaction with the phenomenon, not the instructor’s.
The NGSS recognizes the connection between mathematics and science.
“Science is a quantitative discipline, so it is important for educators to ensure that students’ science learning coheres well with their learning in mathematics.”
The three CCSSM (Common Core State Standards for Math) practice standards most directly relevant to science are:
    1. Reason abstractly and quantitatively - The entire Case History: Murder at Old Fields® activity is an exercise in abstract reasoning, in the sense that the students are challenged to investigate a time from before they were born (1842), a place that few have seen (a rural Long Island community), people they’ve never met (the victims and the suspects), and events they are challenged to interpret. Quantitative reason is applied particularly through the gathering of the evidence from the crime scene, its analysis in the lab activities, and the interpretation of the data generated through these functions.
  1. Use appropriate tools strategically - Conducting the labs, students use a variety of digital tools including digital microscopes, digital calipers and digital data recording devices. These tools are used strategically throughout the conduct of the various lab activities as they lead through the comprehensive investigation of the crime.
The NGSS recognizes the connection between literacy and building knowledge in science “including understanding the nature of evidence used, an attention to precision and detail, and the capacity to make and assess intricate arguments, synthesize complex information, and follow detailed procedures and accounts of events and concepts.” In addressing this, the NGSS development team worked closely with the literacy team of the Common Core State standards “to identify key literacy connections to the specific content demands outlined in the NGSS.” In supporting the NGSS, Murder at Old Fields® therefore also supports these CCSS standards in literacy. Murder at Old Fields® Online Forensic Science Lab Activity lab provides primary written documents as an important basis for the understanding of the crime narrative upon which the science is based. These include source documents such as newspaper articles about the crime, maps and detailed written descriptions of the historical context for the event, the crime scene and the suspects. Furthermore, as a culminating project at the end of the activity, students are asked to write a short report summarizing their determinations. This report must include their determinations supported coherently by evidence and the data from their lab reports in an articulate demonstration of their mastery of these science concepts.