Mystery writers coordinate story elements to develop surprise endings with hidden illustrations.

• 1.

  Write an original mystery story with Crayola® Erasable Colored Pencils on lined paper.

• 2.

  Use Crayola Scissors to cut a door or window (a closable flap) in the center of a piece of construction paper. In the margin around the flap, use colored pencils to illustrate your mystery story.

• 3.

  Open the flap. Use Crayola School Glue to attach white paper behind the construction paper. Dry overnight.

• 4.

  Draw the solution to your mystery on the paper behind the flap. Close it. Staple the flip-flap illustration to the front of your mystery story.

• 5.

  Friends read the story, look at the cover illustrations, and try to figure out how the mystery is resolved before they peek behind the flap.

Standards

• LA: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade level topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
• LA: Participate in shared research and writing projects.
• LA: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.
• VA: Use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories.
• VA: Use visual structures of art to communicate ideas.

Adaptations

• Students collaborate to write an original story on a selected topic. Students create several solutions, or endings, to their story.
• Using the same format, students work independently to write self-portraits and create a sketch to accompany the writing in the flip-flap format.