This year in language arts we read the book, The Westing Game. Ellen Raskin is the author of this story. This is a mystery novel. It was a confusing book but incredibly fun to read. I always felt comfortable reading this because it was not a scary or frightening mystery. It was a cozy mystery! A cozy mystery is set in a small village, has aristocratic family, and has a murder without gory details. I seemed to always be into it because each chapter would leave you with a feeling of suspense.

After we read The Westing Game, we had a test. The test was open note. To prepare for the test I worked very hard on my trading cards. Trading cards is and app on our iPads where you make a card and chose what it is about. For example, all my cards were about fictional characters. In the card you can insert a picture or drawing and there are boxes for all the different information. The reason I spent such a long time on my trading cards was because they were the only notes we could use on the test. Other than that, I studied about the author and some types of mysteries.

For extra credit, you could dress up as one of the characters from the book. I dressed up as Sydelle Pulaski. It was fun seeing all my friends dressed up and how creative they were! The second extra credit was to memorize part of the song America the Beautiful. There is a reason why it was this song and not just any random song. If you read the book you will find out why!

I learned a lot from this experience. The book was challenging to understand at some points and there were so many details that you needed to pay attention to. I also learned that it is a good idea to work on your notes as you go through the book and not wait until the night before the test. I worked on my notes throughout the whole time and it was super helpful at the end. Although, it was still very challenging to find the stuff I had forgotten to take note of. This was a challenging but educational experience!