Westing Game

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Home : 2007 : May : 25

Westing Game
By SusanTeach

Yes, I taught this book with my high 5th graders and both the boys and girls loved it. I did something similar to SC - each child kept a "detective's notebook" to write down clues, characters, etc... Also, each day at the
end of the reading they'd write a short paragraph of who they thought "dunit" and why.

Some other things we did:
*Before reading the book, I'd read a "5 min. mystery" (book I found) and let them try to solve it.
*After reading the book I let them bring in their Clue games and we broke them into groups to play.
*We watched the movie Get a Clue and did some comparing/contrasting.
*I

gave groups of students a "puzzle piece" (piece of construction paper shaped like a jigsaw puzzle piece) and they put a character's name and clues about him/her. We put all the pieces randomly around on a bulletin board that said "Whodunit?" at the top.
*I gave groups of students a baggie with 3-5 objects in it (such as a paperclip, paper with a number written on it, pen, eraser, etc...). They had to use those clues to write their own mystery. They were allowed to include a "red herring" if they wanted to.

That's all I can remember, other than the typical summarizing, predicting, comprehension questions, etc... The book is a wonderful mystery! I wish I could use it with my 3rd graders, but there's no way they'd follow it! :D