Across the Curriculum with Detective Fiction for Young People and Adults

Strategies

Students will be guided in reading three novels from one or all of the authors. I will suggest when introducing this unit to classes that one author must be chosen at the very least by students to follow, study, and discuss. I would recommend that Himes' works be used in only the 12th grade honors English Language Arts class. None of the novels chosen for this unit are written for adolescents, but all of them are still well worth learning from for older students.

To introduce the concept of detection and analysis through observing language patterns and clues, I will ask students to read a children's detective story from the Kid Caramel: Private Investigator series by Dwayne J. Ferguson or a short, short mystery for older readers such as "A Gathering of Old Men" by Ernest Gaines. This will give students some of the necessary training needed to be good observers while they read a mystery or detective story. While interacting with this unit, students will be guided in analyzing plot and character development, highlighting and discussing major and minor thematic issues, and researching the historical context. I will give assistance to students in finding and analyzing the narrative structure of each of the authors' works. Students will become familiar with formal and informal language in dialogue, as presented in the works. The importance of understanding vernacular in written form, used to depict the expressions of the African-American community both within and beyond standard English language usage, will be addressed and discussed within the unit.

I will instruct students by using various reading strategies such as: guided reading, shared reading, reading aloud, and independent reading. Students will be directed through writing assignments to assess their level of understanding of the texts they have read by using various methods of inquiry, both individually and in groups. Students will also have the opportunity to view film clips from movie adaptations of the detective stories by the same authors they have read. While reading the texts, student will be divided into—at the most—four reading centers. At each center there will be a specific text assigned. In ninth grade classes, students will choose between the Mosley and Neely detective novels. Twelfth grade students will choose to read and study from Mosley, Neely and Himes detective novels.

The reading centers will allow for a more intimate exchange of ideas between students and the text. I will help to focus student reading so that they can track clues, question historical context, examine red herrings, consider dialogue use, analyze characters, and recognize the conventions of the plot. Students will be encouraged to use the SPREADS¹ reading strategy while in student-led reading groups. This will empower students at all reading levels to participate in the group's activities.

Despite its apparently restrictive conventions, detective fiction is one of the more open forms of modern literature, one that most readers find they enjoy. It involves the transformation of a fragmented set of events into an ordered understanding. Detective fiction seems to offer a bridge between a private dream-like state and a literary experience.² The cultural background students bring into the classrooms from their family life and regional upbringing will enhance the pleasure of reading this type of novel: simply said, detective fiction is an easy read, not because it is simplistic but because there is so much in it that appeals. Students from all reading levels will be able to grasp the important issues in all of these books by using all their faculties, not just intellect.³ This unit's texts should provide excitement for students who otherwise might not want to read anything.