Whodunnit?

Brief Description

Objectives

• identify the elements of a mystery.
• review mystery stories.
• write their own mysteries.
• engage in forensic science experiments related to mysteries.

Keywords

Materials Needed

• mystery video that is age appropriate
• variety of mystery stories
• paper and pencils
• materials to make and bind books (if desired)
• materials for selected science activities

Lesson Plan

In her unit Whodunnit?, Susan Seagraves presents several activities that she uses to create an effective and entertaining learning experience about mysteries. The language arts activities begin with mystery reading and end with students writing original mystery stories and binding them as books. There are also many forensic science activities such as making lip prints and shoe prints that require various simple materials.

Assessment

Seagraves uses rubrics to evaluate the science activities and monitors class participation in the other activities. She evaluates the writing activities by examining the elaboration of sentences and ideas, originality of the story, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Lesson Plan Source

Mrs. Seagraves' QUEST Class and Thematic Units

Submitted By

Cara Bafile

National Standards

LANGUAGE ARTS: English

GRADES K - 12
NL-ENG.K-12.1 Reading for Perspective
NL-ENG.K-12.2 Reading for Understanding
NL-ENG.K-12.4 Communication Skills
NL-ENG.K-12.5 Communication Strategies
NL-ENG.K-12.6 Applying Knowledge

GRADES K - 4
NS.K-4.1 Science as Inquiry
NS.K-4.2 Physical Science
NS.K-4.7 History and Nature of Science

GRADES 5 - 8
NS.5-8.1 Science as Inquiry
NS.5-8.2 Physical Science
NS.5-8.7 History and Nature of Science

Click to return to this week's Lesson Planning article, It's a Mystery!