Building A Mystery

For those of you that teach using Reading Street in the 4th grade, you know that Unit Four is all about puzzles and mysteries.  We kicked off our Unit Four by using clues to guess what the mystery item in the bag was and reading mystery task cards.  I really want my kids to explore this genre during our unit.  I did some buying on TpT and fell in love with Beth Newingham's Detective Reading Groups.  My kids are going to love getting their case files tomorrow!
  Not only do I want my kids to read mysteries during this unit, I want them to write them as well.  I created a series of graphic organizers to help my students with various pre-writing stages.  I don't know about you but my kids always want to skip the pre-writing and jump right in.  I appreciate their enthuasim but sometimes their stories are hard to follow and lack details.  My hope is that these graphic ogranizers will help my kids focus on some of the main elements of their story first. I plan to pull a sequence one from my files as well.  I have listed this pack of graphic organizers on my Teachers Pay Teachers store if you are interested.  I hope to post photos of my little detectives soon! Oh and I have a fun Simon Says math idea to share with you all soon!