Haleigh's+Page

Haleigh's Page-- Mysteries

** Proposal: ** I want to do the genre of mysteries because it is one of the genres that are to be taught at the fifth grade level in which I will be student teaching in. There is one thing that I noticed and another reason why I picked mysteries and that is students are introduced to mysteries before fifth grade. I wanted to take the time to look at mysteries that ranged from the grades of second up to the grade of fifth. If I had more time I would of liked to look at mysteries at a bigger range of books according to the grades passed fifth. ** Annotated bibliography: ** Rand, Johnathan. //Michigan Chillers: Gargoyles of Gaylord//. Topinabee Island: AudioCraft, 1999. Print. Ser. 5. This is part of a series of mysteries placed in Michigan. This is book number five out of the ten books in the series. The main characters Corky and Ashley are good friends that run into a strange occurrence. They learn all about Gargoyles and the world they live in Darkland. They seek out the truth of the Gargoyles and their neighbor Mr. Hansel. They find out many interesting things throughout and by the end everything is solved and they can go back to living life. They then have new neighbors move in and they have a weird story that they are going to tell Corky and Ashley which leads into the sixth book. At the end it gives the first five chapters to book six. This is a predictable mystery compared to the other books. Roy, Ron. //A to Z Mysteries: The Lucky Lottery//. New York: Random House, 2000. Print. This is a series of eighteen books that involve the same three main characters, Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose. These three get a request to help a boy names Lucky to find his winning lottery ticket his grandfather had given him for Christmas. The three go out on the search of clues and questionings to figure out who may have taken the lottery ticket. They make the journey around town and get what they need to figure out who took the lottery ticket. At the end they catch who did it and give the lottery ticket back to Lucky. Rylant, Cynthia. //The High-Rise Private Eyes: The Case of the Climbing Cat//. U.S.A: HarperCollins, 2000. Print This is part of the, I can read books for children that include the level right on the front, this is a level two. This has four chapters and it is forty-eight pages that have large font and with illustrations on each page. The main characters are Bunny which is a rabbit and Jack who is a raccoon. These two are making plans to hang out and have dinner together. When they are eating and watching TV they hear a scream and run to their door to find their neighbor Miss Nancy who has had a burglar. Bunny and Jack go to the scene of the crime and both do their own things to find clues. They meet back up and put together their clues and go out where they think they will find the person who did this. They then find the person and realize that it was all a mistake and all go back to Miss Nancy and all go out for dinner. Warner, Gertrude C. //The Boxcar Children: The Mystery of the Hidden Beach//. New York: Albert Whitman &, 1994. Print. Ser. 41. This is a series of many books. This is number forty-one for the Boxcar children. The Boxcar children are at Camp Coral and learning a lot about the sea and doing many activities. Then suddenly they are found in a crime of someone stealing coral. They go throughout the book trying to figure out who may be stealing the coral and work together to do so. At the end it ends up being someone they didn’t suspect as much as others that they has suspected. They help capture the suspect and solve the mystery right before their grandpa picks them back up to go home. ** Journal: **My journey through this project. **__November 8th__**: Received the Unfamiliar Genre Project **__November 15th__**: Should have thought of what I want to do for a genre and send in a proposal but have been so busy with other classes I have not done this. I won’t be making the target deadline for this. **__Later that Night__**: Have a conference with professor and some classmates on picking a genre that I will enjoy and that will be beneficial to me in some way. **__November 16th__**: Came up with three different choices that I may want to do for the project and sent them to the professor. They are a website, digital story, and mysteries. I was looking at websites because the class I will be student teaching in has a website that my host teacher uses. I then thought I might like the digital story idea because of the example that we saw in class and also it was one that others in class were doing that if needed could get ideas to help me do this. I then looked at the GLCEs for fifth grade because that is the grade I will be student teaching in and looked at a genre they should be learning about at this grade. **__November 19th__**: E-mail professor to ask what group I am because I had not been put in a group yet. I was then put in a group with Nicole, Brooke, and Kelsey. Nicole added me to their wiki and I looked that over to see what they had done but they also still had nothing posted in the wiki. **__November 20th__**: Really think that I may really want to do websites so I Google places that will allow me to do a free website and start playing with what I could possibly do with a class website. I then also look online at the Central library in the card catalog to see if there were books I could look at about websites and found some. I still was unsure about this so I stopped working on it. **__November 22nd__**: Still am not sure what I want to do for my genre project so that means that I still have not started it or had time because of other classes to start this. While in our groups for this project I listen to what they are doing and how they picked their genre. I said I had been looking at websites but then they asked me how students could get involved with this and I was not sure how this would benefit them the way I was looking at it. The group then also started to post things on our wiki. **__After Class:__** I have a conference with the professor on what I was thinking and come to a conclusion that I am going to do the genre of mystery. I told her how a lot of my class papers or projects have got moved back for specific legit reasons. So she told me to skip doing the proposal and over Thanksgiving break to read what I can and all together do at least three books. We also made a list of what to work on over break or before next class. That was to find and get some books and read for about a half hour a day if not more. Work on the journal and annotated bibliography. **__Later that night__**: Reserve some mystery books from the library to pick up the next day. **__November 23rd__**: Decide to ask my third grade teacher for some mystery books from her class instead of going to the library because I ended up being in her class a lot longer than expected. She gave me two of the books that I had on reserve at the library so that worked out great. Throughout the semester I have watched the students continually asking to read the Michigan Chillers series which made me realize and question why is this a fifth grade genre? **__When Arrived Home__**: When I got home I pulled out the four books that my host teacher had given me and read //The High-Rise Private Eyes: The Case of the Climbing Cat// this was an easy read so I finished that night and took some notes about things I noticed seemed to be a theme in the book. **__November 24th__**: Start to read my second book which was //A to Z Mysteries: The Lucky Lottery//. Read this throughout the day. **__November 25th__**: Continue to read the same book and finish reading it that morning. I then took some notes on what I noticed that were the same as the last book or also add to that list and what may have been different. **__November 26th__**: I shopped all day and relaxed so I did not start my next book today. **__November 27th__**: Start //The Boxcar Children: The Mystery of the Hidden Beach// and got through a good amount of that book and almost finish it. **__November 28th__**: Finish reading the Boxcar book and take some notes like I have for the other two books. I also start to read //Michigan Chillers: Gargoyles of Gaylord// and only get through about twenty pages. **__November 29th__**: Have so much to catch up with other classes still that I have to take a break from this book and do that for a couple of days. **__December 6th:__** After reading this different days and getting to finish this book I can start putting together this project. I wrote my proposal, annotated bibliography, and added on to my journal. I am also going to try to finish both my published piece and reflective letter. ** Reflective Letter ** : Dear Classmates, First I would like to share with you how difficult it was for me to get started with the project of an unfamiliar genre study. I had so much going on in other classes that I couldn’t even think about starting this. I did not really get started on this project until the Monday of Thanksgiving break. From there I picked the genre of mysteries and got some books from my host teacher to read. I chose mysteries because of one I was stuck on an idea of what to do all together for this project and two because a classmate gave me the idea that since I am going to be student teaching in a fifth grade class to look at the GLCEs. I went into the GLCEs and found that mystery was a genre I had never really looked into until now. The first thing that I observed that made me really think why is mysteries not being required to be taught until the fifth grade, I did not understand this because of the fact my third grade host classroom had many students reading mysteries. Then what I really learned is that mysteries are starting to be read at a really low grade level and students seem to be really interested in them. The first book that I read was for a second grade level with assistance in reading the book. I think that with students reading mysteries at a lower grade level than fifth grade that maybe it should be taught at a lower level. I know that personal narratives are what students really need to focus on in grades K-3 but I think that at third grade near the end of the year it would be a good time to transition to another genre. When reading the genre of mystery each book had the same kind of themes. Each book started with the characters minding their business living their normal life when something happens. When something happens either someone comes and finds them to get them to help solve their mystery or they are just put right into a mystery and start to investigate. Once they are aware of weird on goings around them the characters take the time to investigate and gather clues. Through those clues the characters find possible reasons to who is creating the problem. They all have some reasons to each idea that they have come up with. By going through what they need to either confirm or deny their possible person or reason they get closer to the answer. They fit the pieces together and work together to solve the mystery. At the end of each book the mystery is solved and they learn a lesson, are great full, or had another adventure while solving their mystery. When looking at all that was observed in the genre of mystery and how the mysteries in the books tend to happen when they don’t even know it’s about to happen in the books students are reading could really come up with their very own mystery. The Michigan Chiller books really show how you can take a factual place and pick an item and turn it into a mystery of how that could happen. It would be a good transition for students to go from writing about themselves all the time doing personal narratives and take either a new one or one they have already written and turn it into a mystery that could have some truth but mainly being fictional. Starting off the genre with having student read books that are at a lower grade level so they could get through them and still get out of it what a mystery is. The second grade level book, //The High-Ride Private Eyes: The Case of the Climbing Cat// would be one of the five mystery books that students could read. This could even be done in groups and then share what they found in their book being that it is a series with different mysteries. Just like any other genre we want the students to learn and submerge in the genre writing process of it. Overall I believe that being that you are all my classmates and future educators that will be teaching along with me I think the biggest lesson learned it that teach your students any or all genres that the students are interested in and you see them reading a lot of. This may be something we have to do at the end of the year but just because it is under one grade with the standards it does not mean it can’t be taught sooner. With everything that I have read and observed I hope that this can help you look at mystery as a genre that you may teach at a lower grade level then it is said to. Hope that you have a great student teaching experience and continue to do great things with writing workshop that we have learned in the schools you teach in! I will always be around through e-mail to share ideas and answer any questions that maybe I could answer. Sincerely- (Signature) Haleigh Lane Your Fellow Classmate I believe that when students are first being introduced to a genre at a lower grade then is said it should be approached in a grade appropriate way. I think that it is important that the students know the components of a mystery which are a problem to solve, characters, setting, and what will the clues be. Being that I think students could start reading and writing mysteries sooner than fifth grade I would want to take it in an approach that connects the idea of their personal narratives they have been working on and twist them into a mystery. Here are a couple examples that I would show students to start them on thinking of ways to write a mystery after knowing the components of a mystery. Personal narratives I may write with the students throughout the year before starting mysteries. I would list all of my options that I have that I could take and transform it into a mystery which is: · Family vacation at Lake Michigan · Eric being in his leaf camouflage to scare people during Halloween · Tradition for my mom and I to be witches · Tearing my ACL · Our house being haunted · Items I own missing because I move so much Then I would pick one of my personal narratives I listed for them and look at those components of a mystery and show them how I would pick aspects out of my personal narratives to make it into a mystery. · Narrative I picked: Family vacation · Problem: Someone keeps taking peoples sand toys · Characters: Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Me, and the mystery person · Setting: Lake Michigan Beach · Clues: Foot prints, light house, people in water, and families. It was a bright summer morning and my family was on the way to Lake Michigan. We always pack a lot because it is a three to four hour drive. I like to take my Nintendo DS, coloring books, and my I-pod. Being that I am the middle child I seem to always get stuck in between my sister Jessica and my brother Joseph. I hardly get any room to move around and can’t stand that sometimes, unless I am tired then they become a nice fluffy pillow. As we drive we stop at three places a rest stop, fast food place, and a dollar store. We stopped a dollar store because we forgot ALL of our beach toys! How can we go to a beach without toys? We finally got to the beach and started to unload the van. We had three coolers, towels, blankets, our toys, and an umbrella. We all took something what felt like a mile walk down to the water. We were one of the first families there so it was quiet and you could hear the waves crashing and the light house bell ringing. My mom and dad placed the blankets down so that we could have somewhere to sit that was not in the sand. I really loved playing in the sand so I got to dump out all of the beach toys we just bought. All five of us got out things that we wanted to do and yup you guessed right I was playing by the water with our beach toys. More families started to show up and when it got to lunch time there were tons and I mean TONS of families stretching across the beach. My family had been enjoying the beach for awhile and when we first got there the water was TOO cold to get in but now it was warmer since the sun has been out longer and my family was going to run into the water! We all played in the water together and my dad was throwing us all around. I was flying in the air and then SPLASH I hit the water! It had probably been a half hour at least that’s what it felt like and we all decided to go up to shore and have lunch together. There was something missing and I didn’t understand where the beach toys would have gone! So I looked around all over and had my mom and dad look and ask the families sitting around us if they had seen someone take them. Everyone said that they did not see anyone take them so I started crying! I wanted to play with my beach toys the rest of the time we were going to be there. Then all of a sudden we heard other kids crying. They were also missing their beach toys. Jessica, Joseph, and I decided we were going to find who was taking them. We started to look in the sand and found foot prints! Our first clue and we started to follow these certain foot prints because they were not bare feet they were shoe prints! Who wears shoes on a beach? So we continued to follow them and came across that it was only families who had their beach toys missing and it was happening when they were just getting out of the water! That was another clue for us! Then the foot prints came to a stop and that was because we were at the beginning of a light house path. We figured well then we need to go into the light house…so we did! We were really scared because we didn’t know what was up there. We walked up the creaking stairs and gradually started to find beach toys! But when we got to the top there was no one up there but there were a bunch of beach toys! We waited and waited to see if someone would bring up more beach toys but no one did. We were about to leave when a seagull flew in with a beach toy. It was never a person that we were following even though we did follow foot prints it ended up being someone running for fun and needed to wear their shoes. Since we had our beach toys and as many as we could carry back we took to other families who’s beach toys had been taken. A lot of families thanked us and it was quiet an adventure to solve a mystery of the stealing seagulls. We went back to sitting with the family and making sure that any time we went into the water that we put our beach toys because we didn’t want to keep having to go get them from the light house because the seagulls were taking them. It was a long day and I had got burnt so sitting in the middle all the way home was really uncomfortable.
 * Published Piece: **

Additional Note: When reading through this you probably found many grammatical issues. I am aware of this because I did not have time to revise and reread through any of this. If I was to actually use this for anything I would clean it up and make sure it made sense. If I had more time and no other exams or classes this would have been revised and more done to it but that was not the case. I also copied and pasted this from word so if it is messed up that would be why.