I teach in a self-contained third-grade class in Lincoln-Bassett Community School where my students are primarily African-American. It is a typical homogeneous group of children with a range of reading abilities. With this in mind, the selection of children's books in this curriculum unit covers a range of easy, middle and difficult reading levels. These mysteries to a great extent follow the classic blueprint for a detective story except, of course, that the crime committed is not a murder but rather a robbery of some kind or some deception that the detective needs to get to the bottom of.
All the mystery stories that I have selected have detectives that solve the crime. To make the comparison and contrast of these young sleuths more interesting, I have deliberately chosen a variety of detective types. Some prefer to work solo while others depend on their 'Watson' to help them solve the mystery. Nate the Great is a young boy detective while Meg Mackintosh is a young girl detective. Sebastian, on the other hand, is a dog super sleuth whose human master is a police detective. The Bloodhound Gang is a trio of young detectives: Vikki (African-American), Ricardo (Hispanic) and Zach (Caucasian). This variety will provide a springboard for character comparison and contrast and will suggest the broad range of possibilities that my students can choose from when selecting and developing detective characters for their written stories.
This curriculum unit will cover a 3-4 month period during which a new children's mystery will be read every two weeks. This will allow ample time for the students to read and discuss the book, do extension activities, and explore related subjects. Children of similar reading ability will be put in groups of 4-5 and multiple copies of the book will be provided them. Thus, more than one mystery will be used at the same time but with different groups. I plan to immerse my young readers in detective stories and conduct small and large group discussion of the story elements. Students will be better able to write mystery stories of their own once they have been exposed to a variety of good children's mysteries.