The Lexicon of Mystery: Reading Work Made Visible
Sometimes, a theme can feel almost contagious in a school as small as ours, drifting from one discipline to another. While learners puzzled over mystery tubes in Science Block, Violet Band readers began their work as detectives across the hall in Literacy, exploring mystery as a literary genre.
The intellectual work of reading mystery is both complex and irresistible. Violet Band’s unit encouraged readers to start by identifying the “crime-solver” and the nature of the mystery itself — a task that’s often less than obvious in the exposition phase of a mystery novel, when a generalized atmosphere of weirdness may appear before an actual conflict emerges. Once an inciting action occurs, the reader begins to act as a detective herself, paying attention to details that might be clues. Throughout this process, Violet readers learned, it’s helpful to “stop and jot” — to make little notes-to-self that remind the reader of what she’s observed as she amasses potential clues. Violet readers also delighted in catching red herrings — the false clues writers scatter in the mystery to mislead their fictional crime solvers as well as their readers. Violet Band began to understand on an experiential level that when they paid close attention to clues, they made better predictions.
As Violet wrapped up their unit in October, their fearless leader, Ms. Fleury, reflected that “it was such a great first unit because it allowed the new band to think together to solve a common mystery.” As shared texts for read-aloud, Violet Band consumed several books from the A-Z and Whodunit mystery series, resulting in “instantaneous engagement – we were all just captivated and ‘in it,’” Ms. Fleury said. Of course, learners independently read mysteries of their own choosing, too, in doing the work that’s at the heart of the reading workshop. Violet readers also worked in unit-long partnerships to discuss these independent reading choices, and Ms. Fleury noted that the mystery genre made it “easy for partnerships to talk, working with their co-detective to seek help when they didn’t understand the mystery.” Throughout the unit, “mystery book recommendations were floating around the band.” By the end of the unit, she concluded, “we all shared this common language and ideas about how books go, and that helped bring us together as a reading community.”
These practices translate to engaged reading more broadly. At Long-View, our literacy work is based upon structures from Columbia University’s Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. In creating Violet’s mystery unit, Ms. Fleury drew upon a TC unit of study entitled “Mystery: Foundational Reading Skills in Disguise.” Indeed, as Ms. Fleury shared, “all the teaching points can be applied to any kind of fiction, whether it’s making a prediction or solving the mystery of who a character really is – and finding the clues that show more about them.” At any level, the lexicon of mystery – clues, evidence, theories, and the notion of “solving” a mystery as an intellectual exercise – helps us to externalize the work we do as readers. In any kind of text, we can follow “clues” toward larger kinds of meaning – like how authors construct theme in literature, or how scientists assemble evidence to build and test theories.
At the end of their unit, Violet Band created anchor charts to share their learning as they passed the baton to another group of learners – Sage Band, which began their own study of mystery in late October. “Keep your eyes out for clues!” advised one chart. “If you have a lot of clues, use jotting…use a sticky note or a journal and you can write what you think is a clue! If you don’t understand, you should re-read!” Sage learners, whose age range corresponds roughly to the tween years, have found that the insights from Violet Band still resonate as they work with the more complex mysteries they are ready to tackle.
Sage Band currently abounds with theories about their read-aloud, the classic Sherlock Holmes mystery, “The Red-Headed League.” Mirroring the dialectical relationship of Holmes and Watson, partnerships worked together to make visual maps of the connections between significant details partway through the story to try and solve its central puzzle even before Holmes himself. After an initial immersion in the genre with reading mysteries of their choice independently, Sage learners have moved on to book clubs, where they’re reading contemporary classics of middle-grade and YA mystery such as Greenglass House, The London Eye Mystery, One Came Home, and several other titles. As they gain deep familiarity with the plot structure of mysteries, they’re busily drafting their own. In their collaborations as readers and writers in this unit, Sage learners are seeing how talk and questioning lead to the growth of a collective understanding that’s truly more than the sum of its parts.
Like their counterparts in the older band, Violet Band learners are aware of takeaways from the unit that go beyond their newfound expertise as literary detectives. In reflecting on his engagement with text, Walden said, “I’ve grown by stopping and jotting. Because when I first started jotting I hardly jotted at all and now I have deep jots on almost every chapter.” Another learner, Will, observed another new habit, saying “I’ve started writing down theories in my notebook.” Other reflections had more to do with internal processing; Marlowe said, “I’ve grown as a reader when I take pauses and think: What is the mystery here? and: How can I solve it? That helps me actually understand it. Not [just] read it fast.”
Gelila’s comment encapsulated one of the mindsets we’re most excited to see anytime and anywhere in our school day at Long-View. She reflected that “I want to push myself toward applying what I’ve learned in our mystery unit to what I read anywhere… My goal is to take action where parts get tricky.”
