eMysteries Toolkit

The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. [Project Number: 2019-1-DE03-KA201-060127] 18 To solve a case, accurate and selective reading is required of all the small details. Important things have to be separated from unimportant things, statements have to be checked. The aim of reading mystery and detective stories should develop the following competencies: ✓ Reading motivation and reading enjoyment ✓ Knowing and dealing with different types of text ✓ Knowing and applying different reading strategies for meaning-making ✓ Critically analysing a text by focusing on significant details or patterns ✓ Extracting (detail)-information from texts ✓ Verbalizing helpful strategies ✓ Developing media literacy How to increase the motivation of students Not all curricula in European schools integrate interesting mystery detective stories, but the first step is for teachers to identify titles in existing curricula and local or national reading promotion plans an explore the extent to which they may interest young people. The next step is to figure out how these stories and titles can be introduced in curricula and reading activities to reinforce skills across several disciplines or subjects. Reading fascinating detective stories and promoting reading skills is possible via a wide range of media such as classic written books, books on e-readers, apps, via tablets or smartphones. In the context of media-integrative literature teaching, the use of texts can be complemented in a motivational way by the use or production of radio plays, media tie-ins, by attending or even performing theatre productions, analysing TV crime thrillers, an d exploring authors’ webpages. The Internet is very well suited for this purpose because of its structural differences to books. For reluctant readers, images, sounds, short texts as well as interactive and playful elements can be combined to increase motivation and suspense for the reader, thus adding to the dimension of pleasure. For young people, reading on digital media is important. This is often not noticed as reading at all, as it seems to be an everyday activity. It differs from the current