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"You've stumbled on to something much larger than you can possibly imagine." from Endymoin Spring |
If you like mysteries of all kinds, you will love these activities. You will be working on literature and science activities throughout this mystery unit, called Mystery and Detection:Thinking and Problem Solving with the Sleuths. You might wonder why mysteries are a good thing to study, well....
You will use the following skills: |
We are going to have a class discussion about mysteries. We will discuss:
After we read Murders in the Rue Morgue in class, the first mystery ever written, we are going to learn about the author of this and many other scary tales.
Visit the site
Knowing Poe.
While there read all the selections in the Poe the Person
section. BE SURE TO WATCH THE Younger Students: After reading The Raven, student will go to the site call Interactive Raven to learn more about the poem. Plan to share your findings with the class. Older students: You will read Tell Tale Heart and add annotations. You will also read The Raven and use the interactive "helps" to assist you in understanding the poem.
In class, read The Red Headed League and The Speckled Band. Discuss. Go to the Sherlock Holmes Museum and read his biography. You can also see some Sherlock Holmes cartoons including this one by Charles Schulz, seen below. Use the drop down menu to find the correct section.
Your teacher will read The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg to the class. You will be able to see the images projected on the screen. After we have read and discussed the images we will go to the computer lab to do the following activities. Look around the Chris Van Allsburg website. When you finish looking around the site go to the section "About Chris". Choose frequent questuins. Read the questions and the answers. You might use the printer friendly version, it's a little easier to read. You can ralso ead some answers to questions that kids have asked Chris Van Allsburg here.
After you hear the story you are going to look
at the
images online; choose one and write a short story about it.
After you write your story you can choose the links below to look at "solved" mystery stories others have written.
1.
Solved Mysteries
Relax and take a look at an art mystery,
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After discussing mystery writing in the classroom, use the Mystery Cube to brainstorm your ideas.
Nancy Drew
Hardy Boys
Roman Mysteries
The Three Investigators Lloyd Alexander
John Bellairs
These mysteries were recommended by county and school librarians as Must Reads!
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and The View from
Saturday The Ear, The Eye and the Arm Nancy Farmer The Boys from San Joaquin
Down the Rabbit Hole
by Peter Abrahams Shakespeare's Secret Elise Broach
You can also further explore mysteries Comprehensive list to use in your project Unsolved Mysteries
Forensic
Links
Mysteries on the Web
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Take
a look at how the brain helps people solve crimes using this interactive
website called
VIDEOS! Then read Secret Writing in the Poe the Author
section. After you read about Poe's secret writing you can go to
From
the 1930s to the 1950s you could listen to
Welcome
to Clutterbuck Valley. Use your deduction skills to solve the
try to solve 
History
Mysteries 
Science Mysteries 