Whodunit?

I think that the assigned reading of the chapter entitled “Whodunit?” provides an innovative method for teaching students to construct arguments that I would love to try in the classroom! The method clearly defines the components of an argument without directly stating that the students are learning how to write an essay, so they just think they’re working together to solve a fun mystery while unknowingly developing the abilities necessary to construct an essay!

By solving mysteries the students learn to analyze evidence that may be used to constitute a rule which is then used to arrive at a conclusion. As I read through the article I was amazed that the teacher did not introduce the activity as a tool for writing arguments, but simply initiated the activity and let the students draw that conclusion later. Because the activity wasn’t prefaced with a statement about the educational purpose of the mystery solving, I think that her students were probably even more intrigued and motivated to play along with the game! When I read the article the first time I focused entirely on the process of building an argument with the mystery solving activity. I was captured by this great idea so much so that I first failed to notice the numerous other pieces of advice that the author provided.

An excellent prompt for initiating classroom discussion is provided in this chapter! The teacher prompts every student to participate, allows adequate time for questions, expertly asks students to rephrase statements/questions to fit the lesson’s purposes, and seems to ask all of the right questions to keep the activity moving forward. The facilitation techniques to be gained from this chapter would provide a first time teacher with everything that she would need to know about facilitating class discussion! Not only that, but the author of the chapter also shows how several mini-lessons can be included in a larger lesson (first/second/third person perspective, grammatical errors/corrections, etc. within the larger lesson of writing arguments). She demonstrates effective assessments for the topic and even displays how to appropriately give useful feedback to students.

I was first pulled into this article due to the creative method that the author used to teach how to write an argument, but I quickly realized that the lessons/advice to be learned from this chapter are nearly endless! I would love to try this activity in the classroom, and I would love to one day be able to facilitate discussion, evaluate student understanding, provide useful feedback, incorporate several lessons into one, and modify my methods/plans for my class in order to best benefit the students as well as the author of this article does!