My favorite genre to both read and teach is mystery. Everything
from the history of the genre to attempting to solve the mystery
before the end of the book are elements I look forward to both
as a reader and a teacher. The book I use in my class to teach
the mystery genre is Ellen Raskin's "The Westing Game". This
book is a great example in teaching characterization, among
other fictional elements, and lends itself to discussion groups
and writing instruction. The following are activity ideas I
utilize during the unit study. The first activity I use to
introduce the unit is a brief study on the history of mystery
writing. I discovered an article on Thinkquest "The History of
Mystery". I have students read the article, and then discuss the
basic story elements of mysteries. In order to allow students to
practice identifying these elements, each student is assigned a
Netbook, and with a partner, we visit the website Mysterynet.
Students can read online mysteries, identify the story elements,
and click to solve