In this blog, I will be sharing information for assessing and building literacy skills. This first post is about a device known as Mystery Passages. For more information on this technique, see Smith, L. (2006). Think-aloud mysteries: Using structured, sentence-by-sentence text passages to teach comprehension strategies. The Reading Teacher, 59, 764–773.
Mystery Passages: A Diagnostic and Instructional Tool to Build Comprehension
Mystery Passages are an almost a magical technique that motivates students, provides invaluable information about students’ reading processes, and builds students’ comprehension abilities. Students enjoy solving mysteries. When working with struggling readers, I have found Mystery Passages to be the technique they liked best and which provided me with best information about their thinking processes. Mystery Passages yield information about a student’s ability to make predictions, integrate details, and make and support inferences.
Mystery Passages are brief informational selections that have been inverted so that the main idea or topic is not revealed until the last segment has been read. Students read the Mystery Passages in segments and after each segment make a prediction as to what the paragraph is about.
A Mystery Passage should be on the student’s instructional level and should be about a familiar topic. Otherwise, the student will not have the background needed to make predictions. If students have no knowledge of polar bears, a polar bear passage would not be appropriate.
Administering a Mystery Passage as a Diagnostic Instrument
In preparation for reading a Mystery Passage, the student is told that she or he will be reading an article in parts and that after each part is read they are to try to guess what the mystery animal is. After each part is read, the student is asked: “What do you think the mystery animal is?” The student is then asked to explain the reasoning for his or her response: “What makes you think that?” After the student has completed reading all the separate segments, the student is asked to reread the passage and then retell the entire selection. Student’s responses are analyzed in the light of the following questions:
• How well was the reader able to hypothesize the identity of the animal?
• How well did the reader support her or his hypotheses with reasons, inferences, or predictions?
• At what point did the reader guess the identity of the animal?
• What information from the text did the reader use?
• Did the reader integrate information from the current passage with information from previously read passages? Were clues used in additive fashion?
• Were the reader’s inferences and predictions logical?
• How did the reader make use of background knowledge?
• How well was the reader able to identify key information in the passage?
• What strategies did the reader use?
• How did the reader handle unfamiliar words or puzzling portions of the text? (Wade, 1990; Gunning, 2010)
Note in particular how much background knowledge students have and how well they make use of it. Note also how well students integrate information from succeeding segments and how logical their reasoning processes are.
Mystery Passages can be administered individually. Students’ responses are recorded and then analyzed. Mystery Passages can also be administered to a group. In a group administration, ask the students to record their responses. After students have completed recording their responses, discuss them. This gives students the opportunity to expand on their responses. Give students one clue segment at a time. Otherwise, they may read down the page and locate the identity of the mystery animal.
Here is a sample mystery passage excerpted from my book, Reading Comprehension Boosters: 100 Lessons for Building High-Level Literacy, Grades 3-5, which has just been published by Jossey-Bass. This passage has been designed to be used as a diagnostic instrument, but this or similar passages can also be used to apply and practice skills.
Mystery Animals
Use the clues to solve the mystery. After each clue, write down what you think the mystery animal is.
The Most Dangerous Animal
• What is the most dangerous animal in all of Africa?
My prediction:___________________________________________
Reason(s) for my prediction: ______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
•The most dangerous animal in all of Africa is a huge beast. It can weigh more than 8,000 pounds. Even though it is huge and has short legs, it can run very fast. It can run fast than any human and most animals.
My prediction:_________________________________________
Reason(s) for my prediction: _____________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
• Its mouth is gigantic and its teeth huge. It has chomped alligators and small boat in half. Atop its heads are sharp horns.
My prediction:__________________________________________
Reason(s) for my prediction: ______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
• Many animals scientists believe that the hippo is the most dangerous creature in Africa. Hippos have killed more people than any other wild animal.
What were the main things that you learned about the mystery animal?
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
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