Mysteries, Uncanny Incidents, and Unusual Happenings

Resource Ideas

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Description

Are you fascinated with the unusual and do you enjoy a good mystery? Do you enjoy asking "what if ...?" and trying to figure out how or why something happens? Do you like surprise endings and cliff hangers? The world is teeming with wonders, mysteries, and unusual incidents. This unit will challenge you to consider the unusual, the mystery, and the secrets of our world - both real and imagined.

Web Resources

• Writing with Writers - Mystery Writing - What does it take to create a truly spooky story? In this workshop, writers share writing tips, strategies, and challenges to help students write and publish a mystery.
• Expository Escapade—Detective’s Handbook - Students will combine reading in the detective fiction genre with expository writing. Embedded in this unit are reading and writing skills such as defining, editing, explaining, illustrating, justifying, revising, supporting, and validating.
• Unsolved Mysteries - Students use close reading and transactional writing skills to investigate an unsolved mystery and write a report on their own conclusions.
• Teaching Mysteries - Free lesson plans, ideas, and online mysteries to teach critical thinking and reading comprehension
• You're the Detective - This web site is about mystery. It contains two mysteries that web viewers can solve and two story starters web viewers can finish and submit. After web viewers submit them they will appear on the web page and other web viewers can read a lot of different story endings.
• Mysteries of the Unexplained - What are the mysteries of the world? What are the Mysteries of the Unexplained? We picked out six cool and creepy cases to share with you. Who? What? When? Where? And most importantly, Why? We'll try to answer these questions in our websites. They could be facts or just fiction...read our website to make your prediction.
• UFO Evidence for ThinkQuest - A web site designed to enlighten people on the subject and also provide scientific information to answer questions.
• Ghosts - a series of links that take the researcher to different areas of study for ghost research. This site will acquaint students with the different kinds of ghosts and ghost vocabulary
• The Other Tall Tales - a lesson plan where students read one tall tale from the Internet sources listed. Students then answer written questions about the story to measure attention and comprehension. Finally each each student writes an original tall tale based on either real or imagined experience.
• Tales of Mystery and Suspense - Creative writing lessons based around the theme of mystery and suspense. Many of the activities can be adapted for use with other creative writing.
• M(onster) TV - Students research the sightings of "monsters," then present their findings to the class in a broadcast news format.

Web Quests

• What Lies Beneath Loch Ness Lake? - The purpose of this "Web Quest is to teach students how to do research and write a persuave essay. Persuave essay is a very important genre that students need to learn in order to succeed in school and life.

Related Novel Sets Available from the Curriculum Materials Centre

• The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allisburg - Solve the mysteries of Harris Burdick as you examine the fourteen illustrations and their accompanying titles and captions.
• The Boy in the Burning House by Tim Wynne-Jones - Trying to solve the mystery of his father's disappearance from their rural Canadian community, fourteen-year-old Jim gets help from the disturbed Ruth Rose, who suspects her stepfather, a local pastor.
• Redwork by Micael Bedard - Fascinated by the eccentric behaviour of his elderly landlord, Mr. Magnus, teenage Cass discovers that the man has spent years perfecting the art of alchemy and that Cass’s dreams are interwoven with the old man’s wartime memories. With the help of Maddie, a co-worker in a run-down theatre, Cass befriends Mr. Magnus and finds the courage to confront one of the neighbourhood bullies. This is a richly descriptive novel combining believable characterization with mystery and adventure. This book is challenging reading.
• The Curse of the Viking Grave by Farley Mowat - When Awasin, Jamie, and Peetyuk stumble upon an cache of Viking relics in an ancient tomb, they also stumble onto the adventure of their lives.
• The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin - The mysterious death of an eccentric millionaire brings together an unlikely assortment of heirs who must uncover the circumstances of his death before they can claim their inheritance.
• More Two Minute Mysteries by Donald J. Sobol - These stories are written by the creator of Encyclopedia Brown. Each is approximately one and one half page long with a solution written upside down at the end. Your job is to discover who-done-it.
• The Eyes of the Amaryllis by Natalie Babbitt - The ship Amaryllis sinks in a hurricane, but for 30 years the captain's widow waits for him to send her a message from the bottom of the sea. Her granddaughter waits with her, and "the author reminds us that the line between reality and imagination is undefinable.
• Firewing by Kenneth Oppel - The forest heaves and splits in a terrible quake, and Griffin, a newborn Silverwing bat, is sucked down a fissure deep into the earth. Shade, Griffin's father, soon realizes that his son has been drawn into the Underworld, and embarks on the most dangerous of journeys to rescue him. Shade knows he must find Griffin quickly -- legend dictates that if the living stumble into the land of the dead, they have only a short time before death claims them, too.
• Song of the Gargoyle by Silpha Keatley Snyder - Tymmon is ashamed of his father, who has given up his noble position to become a court jester. When his father is kidnapped, Tymmon is aided by a gargoyle, disguised as a dog. With the help of the gargoyle, Tymmon rescues his father, and in so doing, learns what characteristics are important in people. This medieval fantasy is a quest story in which the hero finds what constitutes true courage and integrity
• Who is Frances Rain? by Margaret Buffie - It's going to be a long, hot summer for 15-year-old Lizzie. Normally a vacation at her grandmother's northern Manitoba cottage is the highlight of the year, but this summer the whole family is going along, including her new stepfather whom she detests. To escape the family's bickering, Lizzie explores a nearby island, where she finds the remains of an old cabin and uncovers a pair of spectacles. When she tries on the old glasses she is surprised to find herself watching a woman and girl from the past. Lizzie is determined to find out who these ghosts are, and why they are appearing to her. Enlisting the help of her grandmother's teenage neighbour, Alex, she puts together clues about the ghosts' identities and in doing so, finds a way to help her estranged family reunite. It's a compelling story, carrying young readers from the present to the past and back again.
• A Darker Magic by Michael Bedard - For classmates Emily and Craig and their teacher, genteel Miss Potts, summer begins routinely enough: Emily tends her rambunctious brother, Craig decides to look up a friend, and Miss Potts closes down the classroom. On one of the desks she finds a mysterious old playbill. Soon, all three are beset by frightening premonitions. Something dangerous, something connected with the past is about to happen. As tension builds, the characters' separate stories come together, seemingly forced by the evil designs of a strange magician who appeared in the town some 50 years before. Together or alone, they must resist him.

Do you have a lesson plan, resource or web site you would like to contribute to this page? Contact us at: Online Learning Centre

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