MOUNT VERNON — Mount Vernon Middle School and Mount Vernon High School this year have focused on collaborating both professionally and socially. Since they share a parking lot, the endeavor has been described as “shrinking the parking lot.”
Last week, 24 high school students in Bonnie Schutte’s science classes crossed the parking lot and visited the middle school to serve as “experts” in the art of forensic science.
The high-schoolers set up stations in Erin Gottke and Chris Kane’s Bee Team classrooms to highlight some skills detectives would need to solve crimes. The Bee Team is currently working on a mystery unit.
They worked in small groups with the seventh-grade students, teaching them crime-solving techniques such as fingerprinting, crime observation, tire track identification, blood spatter analysis, blood typing, bite marks and tool marks detection.
“The students loved the hands-on opportunities,” Gottke said. “One of the favorites was tool mark detection, where students learned where blood markings would be on a criminal’s hands if they used various weapons that had blood on them. Another favorite was the bite mark station, where students used circus peanut candy to create bite molds and used that to match size and shape of teeth to the crime scene.”
The seventh-graders enjoyed working with the high school “experts.”
“It was really fun because we got to do hands-on activities.” said Taylor McCann.
“It was fun because we got to use fake blood and see how different tools worked,” said Hunter Kiser.
The seventh-graders will use what they learned to help them complete their mystery story assignment.
Kiser said the session with the high school students “helped me to know what weapon they may have used to solve the mystery.”
“It will help me catch the criminal in my story if I use the things I learned from them,” said McCann.
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