Literacy Workshop: Parts of a Mystery

In my Montessori elementary class, we study writing and reading at weekly Literacy Workshops where students participate in small-group themed activities. Recently, I shared with students a lesson called Parts of a Mystery, identifying the main characteristics of this genre:

·      A question or problem

·      Something strange or unexpected

·      A secret

·      Something missing

·      A curious detective

·      Clues and predictions

·      Distractions

·      Suspense

·      Conclusion

The Parts of a Mystery were printed on white paper with a black background, enclosed in a pouch from Out of Print, adorned with many faces of author Edgar Allen Poe. I also had a basket of magnifying loops, a raven finger puppet from Folkmanis, and a copy of Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Madness. We discussed the Parts of a Mystery, then I asked older students (in my age 6-9 class) to select two younger partners to read one of the following books:

·      The Mystery by Maxwell Eaton

·      Hermelin, the Detective Mouse by Mini Grey

·      Ginger and the Mystery Visitor by Charlotte Voake

·      The Strange Case of the Missing Sheep by Mircea Catusanu

·      Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty? And Other Notorious Nursery Tale Mysteries by David Levinthal

·      Fog Island by Tomi Ungerer

·      Quest by Aaron Becker

Each group had a grid sheet with the Parts of a Mystery on it, and each student had a different role to play:

·      Reader (oldest child),

·      Detective (usually the youngest child – who got to use the loop), and

·      Scribe (usually the middle child, if s/he was a confident writer).

After fifteen to twenty minutes, the groups had finished reading and worked on identifying the Parts of the Mystery grid sheet about the book they had read. We then returned to circle, and each group had a chance to share aloud about their Mystery. At the end of our lesson, I shared an episode of The Simpsons where the cartoon family re-enacts Poe’s poem “The Raven”. Students loved this multi-media and multi-sensory lesson, which allowed them to understand this expansive and intriguing genre of popular literature!

Spiritual Awakening in Nature

At my school, we are very fortunate to be within walking distance of a local park and natural area. Within twenty minutes, we can walk together through residential neighborhoods to a public space that has nature trails, playground, a forest (where students have planted young evergreens to help develop the canopy), and a large grassy area.

Students can connect with their primal instincts in the wooded area, building forts or playing with sticks. We also enjoy hiking deep into the nature trails to find a quiet spot for each child to sit, observe, reflect, and write in his/her journal about what it feels like to be alone in nature. This experience is spiritually uplifting for young children, whose lives may be very structured.

Richard Louv has written extensively about “nature deficit disorder” – the myriad ways in which modern children enjoy increasingly less time outdoors, engaged in “free play” of their own devising. These images capture the necessity of such time better than I could ever describe!

Reading Comprehension: My Favorite Fiction Character!

A homework project that provoked excitement in my 6-9 classroom was “My Favorite Fiction Character”. 

This was a two-week project. During the first week, students chose their top three favorite fiction characters and wrote about why they liked them. 

Was the character a hero or a villain? They were elated to share their writings and illustrations in class at homework sharing group.

During the next week, students designed a costume to wear for an entire day, dedicating themselves to the one fiction character they most admired. 

Children enjoy any excuse to dress up and embody others – such as Snoopy, Chet Gekko, and the BFG.

This project further encouraged students to write book recommendations (as a Literacy group activity) for peers and younger students. Nothing motivates a child to read something new like hearing about a good book from a friend!

Mind Webs and “Going Out”

Last fall, we began our school year with our first field trip to Magnuson Park in Seattle, the grounds of which were once an airfield – now a sanctuary for wetland wildlife and birds of prey. Maria Montessori advocated students “going out” of the familiar classroom atmosphere and experiencing the natural environment as observers. As a scientist, Montessori understood the value of approaching the world around us as explorers, uncovering knowledge with our senses.

With the help of three Magnuson Park docents, our class of twenty students broke into sub-groups to dissect owl pellets; to explore Nature’s Grocery Store on a short circuitous walking path through overgrowth; and to create their own nests using the same materials the local avian population uses. Children enhanced their fine motor skills with tools such as tweezers – pulling tiny rodent jaws from feathers and hair in the pellets. They employed their five senses as they imagined themselves searching for edibles in the environment and planning a soft bed for their eggs.

Upon returning to school from this wonderful expedition, we met altogether at Literacy Group to make a collective mind web. Graphic organizers (such as mind webs, charts, and graphs) honor visual and spatial learners, who may prefer to draw their thoughts and move in a non-linear fashion to express themselves. As an educator, I facilitated this Literacy Group by using a few simple materials: a large (three by three foot) swath of black butcher paper, white chalk, and a small pad of post-it notes. 

First, I drew a spider web with chalk on the black background. Then, I asked students to remember any details from the field trip to Magnuson Park and modeled writing these memories on the post-its. The reason I did this in a whole group setting was to reinforce auditory, visual, and graphic learning styles. Some students remembered things right away, while others offered their observations later, after hearing their peers’ perspectives. Very quickly, we had about forty post-it notes covering our web.

The second step was to group these recollections into categories. One of the benefits of using post-it notes (rather than simply writing a list on a board) was that students saw how ideas can move around in different formations. A few categories students identified were:

• things about birds
• what happened on the way to and from the field trip
•  facts about animals
• facts about Magnuson Park
• sounds and smells

We ended our Literacy group with students working as partners to make their own mini-Mind Webs with black construction paper, chalk pastels, and post-it notes. They chose which categories they wanted to remember most and went into more detail. This is an example of how classroom studies and “going out” activities are integrated in the Montessori environment. Recent brain research describes how the act of recalling a learning experience embeds the acquired knowledge by stimulating the frontal lobe, where working memory and the faculty for organization reside!