And then there were None
By: Agatha Christie
I love a good mystery book, and this is one of my favorite, even if the original name was awful and racist. It is really hard to summarize this book to do it justice...it almost reminds me of the game and movie Clue. There are 8 people who are lured to Indian Island under flase prentenses, by a man that they later discover no one knows, Mr. Owen. They are greeted by Mr and Mrs Rogers, the butler and maid, and after a hearing a recording of their misdoings or murders, they slowly start to die off, or are killed off. Police discovered a bottle after the deaths that tells of a judges desire for justice to be served by people when the law could not serve that justice.
This book was written in 1939 by Agatha Christie, and is required reading for 9th grade English classes. It is considered mystery, because it is a page turner, that uses the who done it aspect to tell a story. This is a chapter book. That has an index, table of contents, and headings as text features. There are no illustrations other than the cover. Our textbook does not really share details of a good mystery book, but I would imagine they include clues, a lot of room for speculation as to the who, what, where, when, or why; and I feel that this book captures that mystery that allures readers.
Some activities that can be used, are first to play the game clue, get students interested in teh material, although I think that murder mystery is interesting all in itself. But getting the kids in the looking for clues mindset, so that when they read teh text they can follow some clues, come to conclusions, and discuss possible ideas with their classmates. Another idea is to write a timeline or sequence of events to map the story. What happened first, next, and so on...so the kids are engaged in the text.
Resource:
Christie, A. (1939). And then there were none. New York. Harper Collins.
I think this book would be awesome to play an Island Mystery Murder Classroom game. As a teacher, I would pick a student that I knew would be able to keep the secret that they were the murderer, so that the class would actually be able to play out the game. I think by doing this activity before the book would help students to get engaged in the topic. I also think that it would be helpful in comprehension to read the book and after completing it, give students roles from the book, and then act out the classroom game of the Island Mystery.
ReplyDeleteAnother activity I think would be good for this book and age group as well as comprehension would be drawing. As you mentioned in your blog there is no illustration except for the cover. I think it would be a good activity to see the students comprehension of what they read to have the students draw an illustration from each chapter after reading. At the end of the book they should be able to re-tell the story from their chapter illustrations.
I have never heard of this book, but after reading your blog I'm quite interested in checking this book out! Thanks!!