This Lesson's Title:

Launch your own Murder Mystery

an organized discovery of an original crime scene

This lesson was developed for WritingFix after being proposed by NNWP Teacher Consultant Erica Pienkowski at an AT&T-sponsored in-service class for teachers.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the chapter book The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially from chapters 3 and 4 of the book.

Check out The Westing Game at Amazon.com.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

This activity is based on Ellen Raskin’s novel, The Westing Game, and student writers will be asked to write a murder mystery, choosing the victim, murder weapon and the suspect.  The assignment asks them to write a story about the murder for their reader, giving clues through the story for the reader to solve as they are reading the story.  Students are encouraged to use descriptive words that help to paint the picture for the reader. Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is idea development; the writer’s goal is to create an original murder mystery scene that intrigues the reader to know the entire story.  The support trait in this assignment is organization; students will use lesson's graphic organizer to help them plan a scene that contains purposeful paragraphs and sections.