This reading unit of study focuses on reading mysteries in the classroom. Includes mini-lessons, anchor charts, graphic organizers & more. FREE

My teaching partner Racquel came up with the idea of giving the kids pictures from the Chris Van Allsburg's book, "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" and having them write their own mysteries. I did some research and came across a great unit on Teachers Pay Teachers from Rundees Room. (only $3.00, I have purchased many items from her shop) I followed her lessons to get the children motivated to write their own mysteries. I used "The Portfolio Edition of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" which are large prints from the book. I laminated them, so they would be sturdy for my long term use. Day 1- I used Rundee's idea and had the children bring in flashlights. I read the introduction from "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" and how the book came to be. The children walked around the room and looked at the prints with flashlights. The room was dark and silent. They came back to the rug and made inferences about the prints. Then, I had the children walk around once more and stand by an illustration that really interested them. My direction was no more than three by a print. They had to talk about their print and come up with a very short story and share it with the class orally. Day 2- The next day I spread the prints around the room and had them walk around and select a print they wanted to use for their written short stories. It did not have to be the same picture as Day 1. Once again, it could be no more than three in a group. I emphasized picking prints and not friends. The children then brainstormed ideas for their stories. Day 3- We generated a Mystery Anchor Chart. (I have added ways to include more suspense to my chart since this photo was taken.) We began writing our short stories. I use four-square graphic organizers for all of our writing.The kids were so motivated and had no problem getting started! Drafting, Revising and Editing- The children worked for several days on these steps. Publishing and Sharing and Other Extensions- Children have been sharing their stories as they finish. I have one group that is creating a script and making their story into a play...auditions are on Monday! (I love creative kids!) I designed a PowerPoint slide show of their illustrations and recording the groups reading their stories onto their slides. Chris Van Allsburg has recently published a collection of tales written by popular authors including Lemony Snickett, Kate DiCamilo and Stephen King! I purchased the audio book from Itunes and the children are listening to their story written by the published author.

Archduke Ferdinand's Assassination mystery is a PBL unit that gives students the opportunity to research and become historical figures and explore the causes of World War 1 from a first person point of view. Includes unit plan, lessons, 25+ writing assignments, warm ups, exit tickets, reader's thea...

In groups of four, students search for clues in class. While one student is the secretary, the other three are detectives. The detectives memorize each clue. When they return to the secretary, the secretary writes down the detective clue. After all clues are collected, they have to solve the puzzle worksheet.

This reading worksheet's a good way for 4th graders to boost vocabulary and spelling, and a great tool to get in shape for standardized testing.

Der Trainer schult systematisch die relevanten Skills und Kompetenzen und bindet diese mit weiteren vertiefenden Texten und Materialien thematisch an die Units des Schulbuches an. Die beigefügte CD-ROM enthält die Audio-Transkripte und einen umfassenden Lösungsteil.

Time to have your students don their detective hats and magnifying glass as they assume the role of word detective! This fun worksheet will help your first graders learn sight words by recognizing them in classroom books.

Egyptian Pharaohs Text Marking Detective Mystery - Reading - Ancient Egypt - Think Tank Teacher

Kids are naturally curious. That's why they love mystery books! These top picks of mystery books for kids in grades 2-8 will keep them turning pages!

This unit from an as-yet uncompleted ESL, EFL, English language coursebook teaches English through the theme of mysteries. Students practice reading, writing, speaking, grammar and vocabulary. I find students love mysteries and solving puzzles. There's a reason for the international popularity of Law and Order, CSI, true crime shows, and even classic authors like Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. They love to solve puzzles and riddles and have a lot to say about what they think. Activities and lessons include: * Mystery vocabulary such as alibi and motive. * Using modal verbs of speculation to guess the significance of clues * A mystery story as along reading * Reading strategies such as reading for key information and evaluating information * Graphic organizer in the form of a mystery reading worksheet * Mystery writing worksheet to help students write their own stories. The unit comes with complete teacher notes, ideas for alternative or extension activities and an answer key. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Enjoy this? Check out my entire Mystery Section with more clue by clues in different formats. I also have activities to help students write their own mysteries and more! And please leave a review. It helps others find this resource and gives me valuable feedback when creating new ones!

I took this idea from a handout provided by WE are TEACHERS and ReadyGen of PearsonSchool.com I loved the detective and the them...

Engage students with The Westing Game mysteries through Storyboard That's lesson plans, interactive activities, plot summaries, and character insights.

Ok, just because I've been gone from 'blogging land' doesn't mean we haven't been working hard in 4B. I've definitely been documenting a lot of what we've been doing! To start, it was clear to me that our old way of peer conferencing just wasn't working. Kids seemed to be goofing around, not really helping each other, and it was a waste of everyone's time. It frustrated me when most of my one-on-one conference time was spent managing unruly PEER conferences. I knew something had to change. I decided to revamp our workshop so that our peer conferences would hold both the author and the peer more accountable AND work on our 6-traits language. I introduced our 'new' method for peer conferencing using this anchor chart to document our process. After students finish drafting, they are to grab a 6-traits peer conferencing sheet and assess themselves by circling all the descriptors for each trait that they feel match their own writing. Mind you, we did a lot of whole-class practice with scoring writing based on the 6-traits criteria so students would feel comfortable doing this process on their own (and being HONEST!). Through our mini-lessons we've learned that it's possible to have high scores in some traits but lower scores in others. That's how we grow! Here you see Devin circling where he thinks his writing falls on our 6-traits rubric. (Note: The link to the 6-traits peer conferencing sheet above will bring you to an even more updated version than the one shown in this blog posting! Just FYI!) Here's another student assessing her own writing after she's drafted. This student has finished assessing her writing using our rubric. She decides on a final number score and circles it to the left of the descriptors. Then it's time to meet with a peer. (We have a peer conference sign-up sheet in our room which helps students know which other students in the room are also ready to peer conference.) Here you see this author reading his story to his peer. After he's done reading, he will explain to his peer the scores he gave himself and why. It's important for the peer to listen carefully to the author because it will soon be her turn to assign a score to this author for each trait . On the lines on the rubric, she will write to explain the scores she gives him. The peer needs to follow the following sentence stems in his/her scoring response: * I give this a writer a ___ because... * This writer needs to work on ... This process requires peers to truly work together, hold each other accountable, and it gets the kids using our 6-traits language a lot more. The second sentence stem helps the writer establish a goal for what to work on when revising! To see more of this peer conferencing process, watch a clip of us practicing this stage! Our focus lately has been on the trait of organization. We've been looking thoroughly at different beginnings and endings of both student and published writing. Here is our anchor chart documenting what we noticed! In other Writer's Workshop news, these are a few additional anchor charts we have in our room to help keep our writing organized. This anchor chart reminds us of powerful words to use to spice up 'said'! In reading we have been working hard on purposeful talk.This is so very important to the social construction of knowledge in any classroom! It's essential to teach students purposeful talk behaviors before even considering literature discussion groups (LDGs). The majority of kids talk like...well, KIDS! So, if we expect kids to talk like mature young people about different texts they read, we need to explicitly teach them how! Talking about Text by Maria Nichols is a great place to start if you're interesting in learning more about purposeful talk behaviors. I taught each of the behaviors individually through two separate mini-lessons - one day to explain 'hearing all voices' in a concrete way (without text), and a second day to practice 'hearing all voices' using text. Then I taught 'saying something meaningful' in a concrete way without using text, and the next day we practiced 'saying something meaningful' using text , and so on. Eventually all of the purposeful talk behaviors kind of blended together and kids started to discover that we often need to use all of these things at the same time in order to truly talk purposefully about anything! We did a lot of practicing, and I've been taping students in this process. Here is a clip of students practicing their behaviors while they talk about their families. (We had read a few books about different kinds of families to foster a safe environment to celebrate the fact that we all have different kinds of families!) We also had students practice their purposeful talk behaviors while discussing their best or worst memory in school (which helped warm up their brains for a timed writing activity we did during writer's workshop). Here is a clip! As a class, we watched these video clips to analyze our body language and other purposeful talk behaviors. I think taping and analyzing is a very effective way for students to learn how they should look and sound in an LDG. 'Keeping the lines of thinking alive' is a tough concept for many youngsters. Sometimes what happens is that students take turns talking, but they don't really build on what the person before them said. In other words, they don't really DISCUSS, they just share and listen. We applauded the first group in this clip because they had good body language and were respectful as listeners, but we discovered their conversation needed to be more 'alive' by asking questions and making connections to each other's ideas and thoughts. Mrs. Pierce and I taped ourselves doing a weak LDG and a strong LDG. As we watched each example, we used dots and lines to 'map out' our conversations (see chart below). In the weak LDG, we discovered Mrs. Pierce and I shared a lot of individual thoughts. The thought started, and then it stopped. There was really no discussion about anything we said; and Mrs. Pierce wasn't even looking at me during part of our time together! How rude! ;) In the strong LDG example, we mapped out a lot of dots and lines that were connected because we took each other's ideas and built on them. We truly discussed the text to dig deeper. We introduced several conversational moves for students to use to help get their voice heard in a conversation. Students also have these conversational moves on a bookmark that they keep in their LDG books. After we learned the respectful ways to speak and act when discussing with others, it was time to teach our kids how to flag their thinking. This is a crucial step to holding a successful literature discussion group because it allows the kids to track their important thoughts while reading so they have ideas for discussion the next day. Here are the 'codes' we use to track our thinking on post-its. We encourage students to use one of our codes to categorize the kind of thought they have and then write a few words to trigger their thought. This helps them when they get into a discussion group; they'll actually have pinpointed ideas to discuss! Students kept a chart in their Thoughtful Logs with all of our codes on it for easy reference. Here's a clip of our students as they practice flagging their thinking for the first time. The next day, students put all their new learning to the test. We put them in small groups to discuss the text "Slower Than the Rest" which is a short realistic fiction story out of Cynthia Rylant's book Every Living Thing. On another day, we used a high-interest two-page non-fiction text about leeches to continue practicing flagging our thoughts. Here's a clip of our kids flagging their thinking just after we modeled it during our mini-lesson. Below are some pictures of the kids' flagged thoughts. In addition to purposeful talk, we've also been studying the historical fiction genre. We've read several mentor texts, including Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner and Dandelions by Eve Bunting. Our first round of literature discussion books are all within the historical fiction genre. Here are a few of our historical fiction LDGs hard at work: Dear Levi: Letters from the Overland Trail Scraps of Time: Abby Takes a Stand The River and the Trace (I think I put my finger over the microphone at minute 2:00!) Oftentimes, historical fiction books will have a flashback in them. One group's book, called A Scrap of Time: Abby Takes a Stand by Patricia McKissick, has a flashback that occurs towards the beginning of the story. I photocopied some of the pages to try to explain this technique during a whole class mini-lesson. In the first section of the book, three grandkids are spending time with their grandma in her attic. They find an old menu and ask their grandma why she saved it. Chapters 1 through 12 flash back to 1960, where 'grandma' is just 10-years-old, living in Nashville, Tennessee at the time of a lot of civil rights protests. The menu is from a restaurant where a lot of sit-ins took place. Through the flashback a reader learns all about life during the 1960s. In the final section of the book, a reader finds him/herself back in the present - in grandma's attic, where the three grandkids ask their grandma some questions about her life during the sixties. There was also another flashback in the story Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner. We also read The Wreck of the Zephyr by Chris VanAllsburg as an example of a flashback in a fantasy book! In other reading news, here is a picture of the anchor chart that stored all the non-fiction text features we've learned. In social studies, we've been studying the economy of the five U.S. regions. Students have been reading small sections of non-fiction leveled readers to summarize a product or industry that is important to each region's economy. Students are typing up their summaries and we're calling those summaries 'articles' as they each create a magazine of our economy. Through this project, students have learned to: * Summarize main ideas * Center and left-justify their cursor * Use the tab key to indent * Change font size, color, and style * Bold, underline, and italicize * Safe image searches * Copy and paste * Cite their picture resources Here is the inside of one student's magazine. Next week we will be using this site to create magazine covers! Lastly, we had a chance to meet with our second-grade buddies earlier this month. We split the buddies up into two groups and one group stayed with Mrs. Adams to play holiday bingo. The other group was with me in the computer lab. Buddies used this site to play a variety of math and English games. One of the most popular games to play was called 'Story Plant' where students could click on different leaves to create the beginning to a unique story. Depending on what leaves were clicked, you would get a different combination of characters, settings, problems, etc. The computer generates a beginning to a story that the kids can print off and finish during writer's workshop! Have a wonderful weekend!

I have been getting a lot of requests for more book club packets. I am so glad you guys like them! Here is a 2 pack I used with my 2nd grade...

A cardboard cut-out model template for the Ark of the Covenant (from Exodus 25:10-22). PDF version (142 KB)

Boost reading comprehension skills with this language arts worksheet. Kids read the story, then use clues from the story to write their own conclusion below.

These K-3 arts integration lessons have been cultivated from across a variety of content and arts areas to showcase high-quality integrated instruction.

Teach English Writing and Arguments Teaching ESL students how to write logical arguments supported by warrants is a slow but worthwhile exercise. Once ESL students learn how to write these arguments, their text becomes clear and persuasive. This mini lesson writing lesson incorporates several s

Serial Podcast Season One by Sarah Koenig is a fantastic way to teach literary nonfiction, rhetoric, bias, and the power of storytelling. This podcast is so engaging that even your most reluctant students will be enthralled with the true crime content! This Serial unit plan will provide you with literary nonfiction activities that help students analyze the production of the podcast, discuss bias from multiple angles, examine rhetoric from a real-world perspective, and so much more. All of these updated Serial podcast activities are standards-aligned and designed to teach listening as literacy. You will get these updated Serial lesson plans: ⭐Serial Introduction stations to engage learners from the start ⭐ True Crime Color and Chronicle Booklet to keep students focused ⭐ Serial Episode 1 activity : Analyzing Literary Style and Voice with an Agatha Christie pairing ⭐ Serial Episode 2 activity : Exploring the Literary Nonfiction Genre ⭐ Serial Episode 3 activity : Distinguishing mood and tone with an Edgar Allan Poe pairing ⭐ Serial Episode 4 activity : Practicing speaking skills in a Socratic Seminar ⭐ Serial Episode 5 activity : Exploring podcast purpose with a Crime Junkie pairing ⭐ Serial Episode 6 activity : Contemplating claims, counterclaims, and rebuttals ⭐ Serial Episode 7 activity : Skipping or coloring in the booklet ⭐ Serial Episode 8 activity : Analyzing rhetorical appeals ⭐ Serial Episode 8 activity : Exploring characterization with a Sherlock Holmes pairing ⭐ Serial Episode 9 activity : Considering wrongful convictions with a Criminal pairing ⭐ Serial Episode 10 activity : Analyzing the art of rhetoric with Rabia Chaudry pairing ⭐Serial Episode 11 activity : Discussing the ethics of true crime with Truman Capote pairing ⭐Serial Episode 12 activity : Exploring author's choice and angle ⭐Serial Rationale and standard alignment ⭐ Serial pacing guide ⭐Serial essay prompts ⭐Serial test ✍Download the preview for an overview! ✅Editable to fit your needs ✅ Can be used digitally or print ✅ Answer keys for all What teachers are saying: ❤️ Kids LOVE this unit. They love finding evidence (never thought I would say that). The socratic seminar layout was also been super helpful. ❤️This is such an engaging podcast, and I love all of the literary elements tied into this unit! My seniors loved it. ❤️What a fantastic unit! I'm using this with my AP Language and Composition class since we still have a good month of school left after the test, and they are enjoying the story and analyzing rhetoric in an engaging and new way. ❤️ This resource made teaching this unit to my elective class enjoyable, engaging, and rigorous. I greatly appreciate the thought that was put into this to make it something that students can engage with in a meaningful way. ❤️ I used this with my English 12 kids who were going through a serious bout with senioritis. It pulled them in and was easy for me to use.

Are you looking for a hands-on, high-engagement unit to get your students excited about writing? Look no further! WARNING: This unit involves chocolate! This 3 week unit covers the Common Core standards for opinion writing for both 2nd and 3rd grades. This unit is perfect for 2nd graders! If you are considering this product for 3rd grade, I recommend using it in the beginning of the year as an introduction to opinion writing or for your writers that require extra support. Instruction is scaffolded to enable your students to become independent writers in the area of opinion writing. Kagan Cooperative Learning structures are used in the lessons to ensure that your students are highly engaged in the learning process. For your convenience, all printables can be found together at the end of the unit. That way there is no need to search through the lessons to find what you need. All of your handouts can be printed out at once before you begin instruction. Books chosen for this unit (not included but can be purchased through Amazon.com or found at your local library): ♡ Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld ♡ Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems Included in this unit: Detailed Lesson Plans for 3 weeks ✎ "I CAN" statements (grade specific) ✎ "Would You Rather..." activity ✎ Fact or Opinion game ✎ Anchor Charts ✎ Anchor Papers ✎ Graphic Organizers and Thinksheets ✎ Writing Templates ✎ Editing/Revising Checklists (grade specific) ✎ Student Self-Reflection ✎ Grading Rubrics (grade specific) ✎ Craftivity ✎ Author Award ===================================================== Please download the preview for more information on this product. ===================================================== Other writing units found in this store: Mystery Writing: A Fictional Narrative Unit of Study Personal Narrative: I Can Write About Me Thanks for stopping by! Connect with Snips, Snails, & Teacher Tales Facebook Fan Page Instagram My Pinterest Boards Terms of Use Copyright © Melanie Redden (Snips, Snails, & Teacher Tales). All rights reserved by author. This product is to be used by the original downloader only. Copying for more than one teacher, classroom, department, school, or school system is prohibited. This product may not be distributed or displayed digitally for public view. Failure to comply is a copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Clipart and elements found in this PDF are copyrighted and cannot be extracted and used outside of this file without permission or license. Intended for classroom and personal use ONLY.

Visit the post for more.

If you choose to read this book art with students, there are many ways to extend and enrich student learning. Here we will cover several favorites.

Do you believe in the Bermuda Triangle? Compare witness accounts of these weird waters and draw your own conclusions in this reading worksheet.

Your students will find cause and effect relationships as they read about the night the Titanic sank.