4th Grade...Mystery Writing

March is Mystery month...any good writing activities for your 4th graders?

Also, what do you expect from your 4th graders writing wise at this point in the year?

Re: 4th Grade...Mystery Writing

I have done mini-mysteries as a listening activity pre- ELA, but you can use them anytime.

I've never done writing mystery stories as a publishing piece, but it might be interesting. You could model some well written mysteries so you can identify what elements should be in their writing.

I also love reading Five Minute Mysteries with my kids.

As for writing benchmarks, hmmm....
I guess having a good sense of the writing process, like:
*being able to go back to a seed idea and use it to create a piece
*be able to edit
*be able to revise using minilesssons we've done
*be able to formulate a B, M and E
*Have an awareness of things like details, leads, character development, perspective etc.

Re: 4th Grade...Mystery Writing

I have teaching points for writing mysteries if you are interested. If you FM me, I can fax them to you.


The class I am working with is going to have a hard time writing mysteries. I can't even get them to write good/evil characters for fairytales. I think mysteries are one of the most difficult to work on.

Good Luck!