The past several week we have been working on the mystery genre. We started off by learning what make a mystery a mystery. We discussed that there are clues given throughout the story to help you solve the mystery but some of the clues will be misleading (red herrings). We read some simple who done it mysteries, identified suspects, used the clues and evidence to eliminate some of them until we were left with one. The students then used a more challenging text and with partners they filled out a suspect sheet and at the end of the story filled out a detective case report (story map). Each student was then assigned a mystery and with their literature groups they are reading and discussing the twists and turns they are encountering in their stories.