BRAIN TEASER MYSTERY STORIES GRADES 5-8: Making inferences

Item description

Mini-mysteries are not only fun brain teasers, but also practice inference making skills. Students practice close reading as they search for text evidence to solve the mysteries. These 15 short mysteries are carrots for the end of the day, warm ups or even bell ringers. Alternatively, you could assign them as high interest home study tasks for students who typically grumble about homework.
When reading the tales as a whole class, the most obvious methods of using these mysteries are to read each one out loud or to show them on your screen. The students then guess the solutions. They can also be read in small literacy groups or circles. If you want the students to work a bit harder, they could record and explain their guesses on the included worksheet, and write their own story, using the guidelines. The solutions are on a different page from the story and its question, so that students cannot see them accidentally; that would really spoil the fun! A few stories are ‘one offs,’ but some characters like riddlers Matt and Sophie, and Mr and Mrs Orange and their twins Pip and Peel, appear in more than one tale.

Included in the resource:

15 vividly illustrated mini mysteries.

An optional tips page, explaining the most common mystery/ riddle clue types.

An optional working page, so students can write down their guesses, and keep a tally of how many mysteries they got right.

A mini-mystery writing advice sheet, to guide students in writing one of their own.

A simple teacher rubric to mark the students’ own mini-mysteries.

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