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Download the plug-in tools you need to use our games and tools, or check to see if you've got the latest version.
Looking for ways to engage your students in online literacy learning? Find more interactive tools that help them accomplish a variety of goals-from organizing their thoughts to learning about language.
Check out our collection of strategy guides to find effective literacy teaching and learning strategies to use in your classroom.
Home › Classroom Resources › Student Interactives
Student Interactive
Mystery Cube
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| Grades | 6 – 12 |
| Interactive Type | Writing & Publishing Prose |
| Tech Requirement | |
| URL | http://www.readwritethink.org /files/resources/interactives /cube_creator/ |
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ABOUT THIS INTERACTIVE |
The Mystery Cube interactive has been changed to a new format: the Cube Creator.
Summarizing information is an important postreading and prewriting activity that helps students synthesize what they have learned. The interactive Cube Creator offers four options:
Bio Cube: This option allows students to develop an outline of a person whose biography or autobiography they have just read; it can also be used before students write their own autobiography. Specific prompts ask students to describe a person's significance, background, and personality.
Mystery Cube: Use this option to help your students sort out the clues in their favorite mysteries or develop outlines for their own stories. Among its multiple applications, the Mystery Cube helps students identify mystery elements, practice using vocabulary from this popular genre, and sort and summarize information. Specific prompts ask students to describe the setting, clues, crime or mystery, victim, detective, and solution.
Story Cube: In this cube option, students can summarize the key elements in a story, including character, setting, conflict, resolution, and theme. Students can even identify their favorite part of the story. This can be used as an alternative to the Story Map interactive.
Create-Your-Own Cube: Working on a science unit? Doing some research on volcanoes? The Create-Your-Own Cube is your answer. This version allows teachers and students to generate their own questions or topics. Teachers can type in the questions, lock them from editing using the padlock icon, and save the file using the Save tab at the top of the screen. The saved file can then be shared with students to enter in their responses. Students can also customize cubes on topics of their choosing.
Students can save their draft cubes to revise later. See the 5-minute video tutorial Saving Work With the Student Interactives for more information on have to save, e-mail, and open a file in any of the ReadWriteThink Student Interactives. The finished cube can also be saved, printed, and folded into a fun cube shape that can be used for future reference.
For ideas of how to use this tool outside the classroom, see Bio Cube and Mystery Cube in the Parent & Afterschool Resources section.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Recording Readers Theatre: Developing Comprehension and Fluency With Audio Texts
Students investigate audio texts of mystery stories, evaluate them in terms of both literary and audio qualities, and create Readers Theatre scripts, which they use to record their own podcasts.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Investigating Genre: The Case of the Classic Detective Story
After critiquing a list of conventions for the genre, students read, view, or listen to a classic
mystery, and then produce a mystery of their own, reflecting on the purposeful ways in which
they adhered to or altered the genre conventions.
Grades 5 – 9 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick: Using Illustrations to Guide Writing
Students use illustrations from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as a guide to write mysteries
and then present their stories to the class for students to discuss to which illustration each
story corresponds.
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Developing Story Structure With Paper-Bag Skits
Lights, camera, action, and a bit of mystery! In this lesson, students use mystery props in a skit bag to create and perform in short, impromptu skits.
Grades 3 – 12 | Student Interactive | Organizing & Summarizing
Bio Cube is a useful summarizing tool that helps students identify and list key elements about a person for a biography or autobiography.
Grades 3 – 8 | Calendar Activity | February 3
In 1927, Joan Lowery Nixon was born.
As a class, a genre study of mysteries takes place and a chart is made about what makes a good mystery.
Grades 3 – 8 | Calendar Activity | October 31
Students research information on Halloween, create masks or costumes from a text they are reading, or write a narrative essay describing their best Halloween ever.
Grades 3 – 8 | Professional Library | Book
Guided Comprehension in Grades 3-8
This book has everything you need to use the Guided Comprehension Model effectively with students in in upper elementary and middle school.
