The fun, mystery-based activities in this colorful 64-page book develop writing, reading, higher-order thinking, and organization skills. Students 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 high-interest stories 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. Sample answers and a simple scoring rubric are provided to making grading easier. 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.