Summary
The Electric Company and Francine pretend to be characters from the Casey Calloway mystery book series to solve a real neighborhood mystery and win the 'Master Detective' title. Vocabulary spotlight: character, details, detective, mystery, clues. Excellent for RL.2.1 and reading comprehension — the episode shows how real readers use clues and details the same way a story detective does.
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Teaching resources
Discussion questions
Discussion
Good detectives and good readers both pay close attention to details.
- What clues did the team collect to solve the mystery? Which clue turned out to be the most important?
- How did pretending to be Casey Calloway characters help them think differently about the problem?
- When you're reading a mystery, what questions do you ask yourself to figure out what happened before the characters do?
Quick work-a-long
Vocabulary: clue, detective, mystery, character, evidence.
Try it: Think of the last book or story you read. Write three 'clues' the author planted early on that hinted at how the story would end. Were you surprised, or did the clues tip you off?