1st Grade Library Detectives

First graders at Heritage Elementary and Dallas Center Elementary have watched several book trailers this year featuring different detective series books, such as the Inspector Flytrap books, the Nate the Great series, and the Chicken Squad mysteries.






To continue our look at detectives, students did some of their own sleuthing around the libraries in both schools. We first read aloud a book from another great children's detective--Scooby Doo!

We talked about the work Scooby and the gang did while trying to solve the case and then compared it to the work in Nate the Great: The Case of the Fleeing Fang.

Nate the Great reminds us beginning detectives that you need to think, notice, work together, and remember when you work to solve a case. It was just these four things our 1st grade detectives did when they approached their first task: to decode different reading messages around the library.

Students first practiced decoding a message in the back of the Nate the Great book, then they set off in partner groups armed with the secret code (made from using the special characters in Google docs), magnifying glasses (because why not?!), and the paper (which included the visual hint as to location) to record their message.

          

Once students had begun their sleuthing, we continued with a scavenger hunt-type activity that had students first finding the clues around the library then finding books on the shelves that matched their clues.

Again, students worked with their same detective partners and used the magnifying glasses to help them in their search. Students recorded several different responses for the clues, as there were many books matching the clues from which to choose.

With all of the students' work around the libraries, they've become more comfortable looking for items throughout the space, and a few even wrote their own secret codes! Some great additional outcomes after an engaging few days in the library!