[ginger07]

Hi. I am going to be teaching middle school reading for the first time next fall. As a novel, I was hoping to use the book, Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. The class will be made up of only 4 boys. Is this book one that you have used in your classroom? Do boys seem to enjoy it? Also if you have used it, was there anything that you did that really worked with this book. Thank You

[SC]

My 6th graders read this a few years ago and seemed to enjoy it. One thing I had them do was keep a chart of the characters and clues as they went along so that they could be actively involved in solving the mystery.

[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!