Don't make these mistakes with your Sherlock Holmes unit!
Above all, the Sherlock Holmes stories are fun. When you read the detailed descriptions of Victorian London, you tune out your surroundings and get totally absorbed in the story. The plots are well-constructed; it’s psychologically rewarding to see how Holmes collects the clues and fits them together to solve a mystery. And if you’re teaching them in your English class, it’s nice that students already have some prior knowledge about the main characters and general premise! Overall, they’re easy reads, which probably means they’re providing a nice little respite from heavier material if you’re an English teacher.
The Sherlock Holmes stories have a downside when they serve as a text on the English curriculum, though: they’re bit light on theme and character development—which means that you might feel stumped about how to really teach them. They don’t lend themselves to the usual ways of analyzing literature, and if you’re unsure of your approach, the fun of Sherlock Holmes can get frivolous. So I’m going to let you in on the mistakes I made in the early days of developing a Sherlock Holmes unit and what I’ve learned about making it earn its place in the curriculum!
Mistake #1: Loading up on brainteasers
Because the Sherlock Holmes stories aren’t your typical tragic staples of the British literature curriculum, it’s easy to go overboard with emphasizing how fun they are. My colleagues and I would start out each day of our unit with brainteasers and observation tests in order to get students excited to think like Holmes. Students loved the puzzles—but that actually became a problem because it was hard to switch gears into working with the stories. So I think it works best if you keep the brainteasers limited. Do a few lateral thinking puzzles to get the sense of how you can arrive at a sensible answer from a mysterious situation. Watch an “awareness test” video or two to demonstrate how we have to block out distractions when we’re searching for answers. And stop there. From a classroom management perspective, you just don’t want to set the expectation that you’ll do that kind of thing all the time. The pacing guide in my Sherlock Holmes bundle notes some good times during your unit to do them.
Mistake #2: Analyzing the stories with overdone graphic organizers
After the initial excitement of deciding to teach Sherlock Holmes stories wore off, my colleagues and I struggled to think of what to do with them besides answering comprehension questions—so we defaulted to using tired old graphic organizers like the plot diagram, character trait table, and 5 Ws. Boring!
As I developed the unit over the years, I dropped those kinds of worksheets and created new ones (specific to the stories) that helped students learn Holmes’ method for solving cases. For each story, I had students track what Holmes observed and learned about the problem, what he deduced after eliminating possibilities and forming hypotheses, and the truth he determined. This template for problem-solving is useful for students to keep in mind as they approach making judgments and decisions in everyday life.
Related resources:
"The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" Resources
"The Adventure of the Dancing Men" Resources
"The Man with the Twisted Lip" Resources
Mistake #3: Covering too many stories
I think three stories is the sweet spot for reinforcing Holmes’ process—as long as you choose ones that are robust in content! I tried out so many of the stories over the years and found that some of them are less about the detective work and more about Holmes’ relationships or the setting. Eventually, I landed on teaching “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” and “The Man with the Twisted Lip.” Trust me, if you’re just doing the short stories instead of any of the novels, these are the ones that have the most clues to track. Another reason to keep it to three: it starts to feel repetitive when you go past that number and students won’t learn anything new about Holmes’ skills. (See above for links to resources for these stories!)
Mistake #4: Doing a cutesy final project
Just as the levity of the Sherlock Holmes stories led me to do too many pointless brainteasers, it also led me to develop wrap-up assessments that were a little too cute, like a “Watson’s casebook” project that required students to illustrate suspects and evidence and fill out reports about the crimes. It veered into the territory of too-much-art-for-English-class, but given the lack of big themes or complex characters in the Holmes stories, I didn’t feel like I had a good reason to assign a literary analysis essay.
Eventually, I came up with an appropriate writing assignment that requires students to explain why the stories continue to serve as source material for popular media like movies and TV shows. Although the topic extends beyond the original Sherlock Holmes stories, students still need to use evidence from the texts to make strong points (and they don’t have to have seen any of the new Holmes-related entertainment). With this approach, I stopped worrying that the stories lacked enough literary merit to be studied in class and instead started seeing them as a refreshing opportunity to examine what makes a story concept endure.
Related resource:
Final assignment: "Why is Sherlock Holmes still popular?"
A note about grade level
Most of the teachers who purchase my Sherlock Holmes Unit Bundle use it with students in either 7th or 12th grade. Weird, right? I can’t think of any other texts that are typically taught to grades so far apart from one another.
It’s hard for me to say where the Sherlock Holmes stories fit better. They require the reader to keep up with the seemingly minute details that drive the plot, but they’re less complex in terms of theme and character, which makes them a good fit for 7th grade. But the advanced vocabulary and old-fashioned dialogue can be difficult for middle school students to parse.
However, teachers might worry that the Holmes stories are too simple for 12th grade because they don’t delve too much into big ideas/universal themes. (They usually get picked up here because they can be categorized as British literature, which is usually a 12th grade curriculum.) I have to be honest, though, that following the plots of the stories and tracking Holmes’ deductions was still reasonably challenging for most of my seniors. And it was always challenging for my students to articulate their analysis of a text in formal writing, so the “Why is Sherlock Holmes still popular?” assignment most definitely makes the unit rigorous enough for high school.
So I think a Sherlock Holmes unit can be appropriate for both middle and high school students. In middle school, you’re probably taking more time to read the stories and doing a scaled-down or more scaffolded writing assignment. In high school, you can probably go through the stories at a faster pace (with less emphasis on story basics like plot components and who’s the antagonist, etc.) and expect students to demonstrate more insight in their analysis. With my “Why is Sherlock Holmes still popular?” writing assignment, I include three versions: a worksheet, a listicle assignment, and a full essay assignment. Consider your students’ abilities and the amount of time you have to identify which one is most appropriate!
In conclusion
Let’s face it: the Sherlock Holmes stories don’t have much in the way of theme, character, or symbol to analyze, but they do have value. They teach students problem-solving skills and give them an opportunity to do some high-interest writing about a story franchise that has remained part of pop culture for over a century.
To learn more about my approach to a Sherlock Holmes unit and get set with the resources you need, check out my bundle on TpT!
