Mystery Book Club via Skype

We have participated in quite a few Mystery Skypes this year and my class loves them! Almost all of our Mystery Skypes have been geography based, guessing the location of the other class by asking them yes or no questions. However, last week we branched out and did a Mystery Book Club via Skype.

It was very challenging! While there are only 50 possible states to choose from, there are literally millions of books! Although my class consists of voracious readers, we have not read every single book ever published, so we had to use our research, problem solving and deductive reasoning skills to solve the mystery.

Clues that helped us guess the books the other class presented us included author information, award information, publication date and genre. When students realized they were not going to be able to effortlessly figure out the book title, they quickly took to the Internet and started researching. Students also formed great follow up questions to help them figure out the book title.

My students really enjoyed this new challenge and I was impressed by their research and presentation skills.