Teaching The Westing Game!

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So you've decided to read The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin with your students. Excellent choice! The Westing Game is one of my favorite class novels to read with my students!

When I read The Westing Game for the first time, I immediately knew I wanted to read it in class with my students. My only concern was whether or not the book would be a bit too much for sixth graders to handle. After all, there are sixteen major characters to keep track of, and all of them have partners and clues assigned to them by Samuel Westing in his will. However, I quickly realized with some well-thought-out pre-teaching and the right visual aids, reading The Westing Game with my sixth-grade students was definitely doable.

I'm happy to report a year later that I was right! My sixth graders were so engaged while reading. They absolutely loved the book, and didn't want it to end! They even asked if there was a sequel. While teaching The Westing Game was a success, I know they wouldn't have enjoyed the book nearly as much if I hadn't planned ahead and come to class with a two-part game plan. Today, I'm sharing my two-part plan to help you teach The Westing Game in your classroom!

Part 1 - Preteach Do your middle-grade students know what French doors look like?

Could they tell you what a billiard cue is?

Would they automatically know what a monogram is after reading the word in a book?

How about a beneficiary, vigil, or heir?

All of the above words are included in the first five chapters of The Westing Game, and without gaining some background knowledge first, students will quickly become confused as they read!

That's why I teach every word that could potentially cause some confusion before I read each chapter with my students. I simply explain that to understand what is happening in the upcoming chapter, they'll need to know what a beneficiary is, for example, and I explain what it means.

While verbal explanations are good, pictures are better for making associations and retaining information. So, when there is an opportunity to present my students with a photo to associate with the new word they're learning, I take it! I google photos of things like billiard cues, monograms, and French doors and display them on the board. I then watch as they realize that they've known what the object looked like all along and they now have a word to associate with it. I also offer up any additional information they may need including the object's intended use, if it isn't already obvious.

Part 2 - Provide Visual Aids I created the following visual aids, which are all printable cards, to teach The Westing Game. I made them to help my students track each of Samuel Westing's 16 heirs and their clues. Specifically, I created a set of character, partner, and clue cards. Here's a breakdown of each card's design/purpose and how I use them in class. Character Cards: The character cards include the names of each of the 16 heirs as well as other relevant characters who are not heirs. The cards are color-coded and families are grouped by color. For example, the cards for the Hoo family members are all dark blue.

The character cards also include each character's apartment number and a symbol that represents him/her, like Turtle Wexler's braid, Chris Theodorakis's bird-watching binoculars, and Dr. Denton Deere's stethoscope. Pro Tips: I draw a large apartment building on my whiteboard and arrange the characters by floor. I also leave enough space to write notes about each character under each card.

While I have all of the character cards on the board starting on day one, the partner cards don't come into play until chapter six, when the characters discover who their partners are at the reading of Samuel Westing's will.

Partner Cards: The partner cards help students remember which characters have been paired up by Samuel Westing in his will. The two characters' family colors have been blended together on each card.

Clue Cards: I place the clue cards next to each partner card on my whiteboard as each clue is slowly revealed throughout the book. This helps my students remember which clues belong to which characters. My students love getting to add new clues to the board as we discover them!

Pro Tip: To keep the cards in tip-top shape and make them easy to move around on my whiteboard as I teach, I laminate them and add these self-adhesive magnet squares to the back of each card!

Whether it's your first or fifth time teaching The Westing Game, I hope you have an absolute blast reading with your students and the two-part game plan I developed for teaching The Westing Game in my classroom benefits you and your students in your classroom!

Click here to get my Character and Clue Cards for The Westing Game! If you're looking for more resources for teaching The Westing Game, check out my Resource Bundle for The Westing Game which includes writing prompts, puzzles, a memory match game, and more! Until next time!

Lauren