For Teachers and ParentsTeachers and parents find mini-mysteries (MM’s) to be excellent and fun devices for teaching reading, writing, and reasoning skills! Here’s why:MM’s tell a story, offer a puzzle, and are conveniently short. MM’s require, and therefore encourage, careful reading. This in turn helps develop ability in concentration, visualization, mental observation, and logical thinking. A great variety of logical puzzles can be incorporated into MM’s. (I do this deliberately in my own books.) Possible themes include making deductions from physical circumstances (as in the traditional whodunit), matching variables of who did what, analyzing true/false statements, sorting out time sequences, breaking codes, deducing the conclusion from a sequence of syllogisms, doing some elementary math here and there, finding scientific or historical flaws in an alibi, and creatively solving a practical problem. This variety of possibilities helps develop a wide range of thinking skills. Analyzing an MM and coming up with creative possible solutions can be a great focal point of class discussion. MM’s are an excellent exercise in both creative and expository writing. The body of the story can have all the features of creative narration, including description, characterization, action, and dialogue. The solution generally requires analytical writing, either in a straight expository manner or within a continued dialogue. And of course, the short length of the form encourages conciseness! MM’s (at least mine, and any I would recommend) are family-friendly, and free of graphic violence, explicit sex, or obscene language. My detective hero, Thomas P. Stanwick, also consistently demonstrates the virtues of honesty, integrity, friendship, and kindness. A number of teachers have told me of the benefits their students have gained from reading, solving, and even writing MM’s -- and of the fun both teachers and students have had, individually and collectively, in doing it! Click here to link to the excellent MysteryNet Website on teaching mysteries. It includes free lesson plans, ideas, and online mysteries. Click here to link to a Website of MM’s written over the last several years by students at the Dakota Meadows Middle School in Minnesota. Click here to link to a Website on an MM program (“The Two-Minute Mystery Solve- it-Club”) run by the Our Lady of Peace School in Laval, Quebec. This site also has excellent guidelines on writing MM’s and discussing them in the classroom.
Click
here
to view the MM offerings of Suite 101, an online university. The instructor,
Janet Blaylock, also reviews my first MM book, Five-Minute Whodunits,
here.
Click here to link to an excellent Website on teaching and using traditional logic. Click here for a business directory that links to some good mystery and puzzle sites.
For students as well as the general reader, therefore, MM’s can be not only a means of
instruction, but a fun diversion and mental refresher as well!
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