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What a great idea!  Take a classic book and turn it into a springboard for English and science!  Take a look at Debbies ideas about a class on Agatha Christie, and learn how to come up with creative, outside the box, class titles and course descriptions.

I am trying to come up with a great name for a course description I'm/we are currently working on with my daughter. She is going into 11th grade next year and is working on putting her learning plan together for next year. She would like to do a study on Agatha Christie the "Queen of Crime". We have started a web of ideas, but have just hit a wall with this course description. Ideas we have so far..... British Literature, Detective Fiction, forensic psychology, forensic science literature, forensic chemical analysis, forensic pharmacology and toxicology.  She is currently working on putting a reading together of her books to read through out the year. We were thinking of making this an integrated language arts class with maybe some science. We would love to hear any ideas you might have to give this class a great name. Thank you,
~Debbie

When you are putting together a class from scratch, sometimes it can help to see what other people are doing with the same topic.  I did a quick internet search to find another class based on Agatha Christie, and here are some things I found:

For an English class, make sure you cover reading and writing, and that it takes at least 1 hour per day, 5 days a week, all school year.  Often English will take more than 1 hour, but I don't suggest more than 2 hours each day.  If your daughter likes reading, you might consider Learn to Write the Novel Way, so she can write her own mystery!

I like the idea of incorporating a study of forensic science. It's very popular these days, because of all the crime TV shows, so lots of high schools are including the subject. Here are some ideas:

For this to be a science class, make sure it takes 1 hour per day, 5 days a week, most of the school year.  Use the class title "Forensic Science with Lab" if you include chemistry or biology lab work.  I think there are some high school textbooks for this topic....  I'm not a fan of public school textbooks, but looking at one might give you some ideas for content and lab suggestions.

I hope that helps!



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