English Teacher Jeff Webb

  Our assignment on narrative mysteries was designed based on the Reading Street story “The Emperor’s Silent Army”. In the story a group makes a mysterious discovery that leads to an incredible archeological find, the Terracotta Warriors! The origin of the Terracotta army was a mystery when first discovered in China. Our idea was to encourage students to craft a story that was also based on a mysterious discovery or event. The students were tasked with writing a mystery about a puzzling problem or question one or more characters try to solve.

  These mysteries could be about anything as long as they followed the ‘writer’s checklist’ from their book. Students needed to introduce their mystery, create a suspenseful plot or mysterious event, have their characters follow clues, and finally build their plot into a climax that solved the mystery. We started off by giving the students an example mystery from their book titled, “The Disappearing Bicycle”.

  Students first identified the elements of a mystery from that story in groups. Then we moved on to applying those elements into their own stories. One fun activity we used to bolster interest in this area was showing the students ‘One Minute Mysteries’.

  Students were shown the introduction to a mystery and then the audience had to ask yes or no questions about the mystery that would slowly reveal the conclusion. The answer usually had a fun surprise or twist! After that, students started to work individually on their own creations. They brainstormed their own ideas and jotted down a rough draft of their mystery. Through peer critique and evaluation students improved and expanded upon their mysteries. Ideas became more fleshed out and the mysteries started to have more logical conclusions with the help of peer feedback. Overall we created some pretty interesting mysteries for our assignment!

  In the end, students were then encouraged to share their mysteries with the class in the ‘One Minute Mystery’ form. They started by sharing the introduction from their story and seeing if the class could ask the right questions to get to the conclusion of the story. If the students had trouble getting to the conclusion the author could propose some leading questions to get the audience back on track. Students had a lot of fun trying to solve each other’s mysteries and they made some really creative mysteries in the end!