Distance Learning Writing Project | Design a Mystery
Are your families looking for something a little more substantial for students to do at home? Are they hoping for tasks that kids can work on, independently, for a sustained period of time? Do you have gifted students in your class who are no longer having their IEP needs met, because of the limitations of distance learning?
I think writing projects are your golden ticket! And I have a new one to introduce to you all…Design a Mystery!
This project is exactly what it sounds like: students will work through the steps of the project to design their own suspenseful mysteries!
Here’s how this looks:
When you purchase this project, you can choose the digital file from my store, or the printable version of the project.
The printable version comes with a teacher guide and student workbook. The digital version comes with all of the pages of the student workbook, with a teacher rubric and feedback ‘digital sticky notes’ at the end of the project for teacher use only.
The teacher workbook comes with mini lessons, a speaking and listening checklist, final writing rubric for grading, and pacing guide. Obviously, things like final presentation can be eliminated if you are using this during distance learning. Or, you can get creative and have students film themselves presenting their finished mysteries!
The student guide takes your students through the design of a quality mystery story, step-by-step.
Step 1: Choose the perspective. The workbook lays out one scenario, with three different people seeing it in different ways. Your students must decide which character they are going to tell the story as, practicing ELA point of view standards!
Step 2: Plan the plot. Dig deeper into what really happened, how it will be solved in the end, and developing the character a little further.
Step 3: Create reasonable suspects. A good mystery will lead the reader to believe that multiple characters could be guilty, If it’s too straight-forward, it can be boring. This step guides students through creating reasonable evidence that each character could be a little guilty.
Step 4: Leave Some Clues. Your writers will need to plant some clues in their story for the character to find. These clues should lead to the final answer.
Step 5: draft the mystery
Step 6: Revise and conference. An editing checklist is provided for your students to follow independently, but there is also a conference option page. Students can choose what component of their story they would like a little guidance on, and why. This can be done digitally with the digital sticky notes!
Step 7: Publish! Students copy and paste, or copy over in their nicest handwriting, their finished projects, with all details included and editing completed!
This project follows a similar route as my Write a Movie Script Project and Publish a Picture Book Project. Check those out if you want more guided, enriching writing projects!
