Writing Detective - Level One

If you believe you need to think clearly to write so readers can understand what you have written, you'll find that Writing Detective® is a very helpful set of supplemental writing activities.

In Writing Detective®, students in Grades 3-6 act as investigative reporters writing articles for a local newspaper. To write the article, students must use higher-order thinking skills to synthesize clues they identify in the story to solve the mystery. Every activity requires students to put clues together and then evaluate the evidence to infer or deduce what happened in the story. The stories are high interest to make it easy to motivate students to do the analytical work needed to piece together the evidence and write the article.

Before writing, students complete an outline detailing When, Who, What, Where, and How or Why. These fun, easy-to-use activities develop reading comprehension, higher-order thinking, and writing and organization skills. Answers for the Reading Comprehension questions and Outlines as well as Article sample answers are provided. There is a simple scoring rubric to make grading easier.