Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Word Detective
In this activity, students will become word detectives to find spelling patterns in a story, and then sort the words they find according to the patterns. This "word detective" will become a favorite independent activity throughout the...
Other
Word Detective
The Word Detective provides great information on the origin of certain words and phrases that are everyday lingo. Click on Index and chose from the alphabetical list or type the word you are looking for in the search box.
TES Global
Blendspace: Be a Word Detective: Context Clues (Red)
An eleven-part learning module with links to images, videos, texts, and quizzes on using context clues to understand vocabulary words.
Utah Education Network
Uen: Be a Detective Is It a Letter or a Word?
In this lesson, students will distinguish between words and letters. Students will look at each letter or word with an imitation magnifying glass to help them "see" letters and words more closely.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Activity: Picture Scavenger Hunt: Word Girl
In this WordGirl lesson plan, turn on the detective spirit in your students when they must find images in magazines that match the word captions they've been given.
University of Manchester
Children's University of Manchester: Word Literacy: Adjective Detective
A collection of animated lessons on adjectives, followed by a simple quiz and detective game. comparative describing superlative
Free Reading
Free Reading: Letter Hunt Tally: A Letter Sound Accuracy Game
Students play detective and discover a given letter at the beginning of a word. They keep a "tally" sheet and compete with their classmates. This site includes links to Letter cards and a Letter Hunt Tally Sheet.
Media Smarts
The Media Awareness Network: Bias
Slant, or bias, can be found in virtually every news outlet. Use this online lesson plan to help students understand how word choices and other factors can intentionally or unintentionally affect the audience's understanding.
University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge: Nrich: Number Detective
On this one page website sharpen your logic and place value skills while working on this challenge. The solution is available to double check your solution.
Science Buddies
Science Buddies: Computer Sleuth: Identification by Text Analysis
Here's a project where you can try your hand at being a detective with your computer. In this project you'll write a program to do some basic analysis of features of written text (for example, counting the length of each word in the...
University of Pennsylvania
Digital Library Project: The Online Books Page
The Digital Library provides links to the complete texts of 25 of Arthur Conan Doyle's works in many formats.
Curated OER
Npr All Things Considered: Hunting for Gravity Waves
A report on US attempts to detect the "gravity waves" that Einstein predicted. Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories in Louisiana and Washington, looking for "Tremors in the fabric of space-time," are described in words...