DETECTIVES Teacher's Guide - Book - Page 4
THE DETECTIVES - TEACHER’S GUIDE
I. Rationale
The Detectives is a suspenseful, story-based textbook. Each of its six units presents a problem or
mystery to be solved. The young detectives in the story—and students in the classroom—use a wide
variety of visuals, texts, clues, and assessment tasks to help them solve these mysteries. This process
takes students from applying lower order thinking skills (LOTS) to using higher order thinking skills
(HOTS).
Following are several examples of the thinking processes that students undergo during a unit of
study, based on Blooms Taxonomy:
KNOWLEDGE: students read and listen to texts that relate to a problem. They learn to identify and
describe the characters and to define the problem.
COMPREHENSION: students confirm their understanding of the problem and demonstrate
comprehension of the information presented in the texts through a variety of tasks. Answers are
compared and shared in class, orally.
APPLICATION: students make predictions and suggest possible solutions to the problem,
participating in dialogues and class discussions and completing written tasks.
ANALYSIS: Students compare their predictions or suggestions to those of other pupils and to the
actual solutions presented in the story. At times, surveys are used to collect information that reflects
the predictions, opinions, or suggestions of the students in class.
SYNTHESIS: Students integrate information from a variety of sources in order to arrive at the
solution to the problems presented.
EVALUATION: Students are challenged to formulate real solutions to real problems. They make
generalizations based on situations and solutions in the textbook, and apply these to their own
world of experience.
The units also feature extended reading with authentic literary excerpts, as well as WebQuests for
individual, pair work or small groups.
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