Mystery

Using clues for quality!
 Mystery books have plots which often involve crime or other events which remain puzzling and unsettled until the conclusion. Often these book captivate young readers as they begin to piece together information. While reading these books, students are often reading carefully, hunting for clues and looking at books in an analytical way. Although this type of writing is in its own category, it can easily be (and often is) integrated across many areas of curriculum. Since there are many genres which this type of writing could over lap, it is important to be selective and use criteria for selecting quality. When looking into the criteria for this particular genre, it is important to use professional judgement. Elements to think about include:

• Appropriate content (dependent on students)
• Avoidance of stereotypes/misconceptions
• Foreshadowing/ suspense/ clues
• Believable story line/characters

This is a great genre to bring into the classroom.  However, it will be important to provide scaffolding and support in order to encourage understanding and development of detective skills (pulling out key details, making inferences, and predicting.) Often questions like "what do you think will happen next?, who do you think did it?, and why do you think that?," should be asked.

Examples
Double Identity (2005)by Margaret Peterson  
 According to the Lexile measures and the CCSS qualitative measure ranges for text complexity grade band, this book is appropriate for 4th and 5th graders. I would agree with. With support, I believe that students in 5th grade could independently read this book. However, I would recommend this book as a read aloud for 4th grade. Big issues addressed with this text are individuality and family and social structures. Written from the perspective of a thirteen year old girl, this book is captivating, mysterious, and quick to read. The characters voice really sticks out and clues are given throughout the text. With much discussion about the right/wrongness of cloning, this book is connected to local, national, and global issues involving debates with science and technologies. Overall, this book would most likely be enjoyed by students. However, for students to build a deep understanding of what is going on in the book, it is important they understand what to look for in a mystery and how to pick up on clues. Lessons created around foreshadowing and focusing on details mentioned in the text can help student put pieces of the mystery together.


Robert and the Snake Escape by Barbara 
 With consideration of Lexile measure and the CCSS text complexity bands, this book  is recommended for Kindergarten-1st grade. However, looking into the vocabulary words and length of story, I would say this text would be more suitable for 1st graders and 2nd graders. The book might be used as a read aloud for 1st grade. In this short book, the theme of losing, searching, finding is dealt with. Through these experience, the author provides many areas of comic relief which young students would greatly enjoy. This book encourages students to look at clues around them and in their communities when investigating. It can also help them become aware of how people may solve mysteries or crimes in their communities. In order to help students comprehend this text more in depth, I would encourage pairing it with a classroom mystery. Perhaps all the markers have gone missing, maybe the chairs are gone, or what if all the computers are missing? By building a lesson around a mystery and focusing on investigative techniques, teachers can help build background knowledge and increase student understanding.