October is the perfect month to incorporate candy into your lessons. Read more about how we had our own little experiment with sugar and what we learned.
Are you on the hunt for some fun (and free) Halloween activities? If so, then you're in the right place! I'm sharing 3 of my favorite Halloween-themed lessons that will have students writing, reading, and analyzing poetry! That's right! Who says that a holiday-themed lesson can't be rigorous AND engaging? Not me! I love lessons that pack an academic punch and these freebies do just that! Capitalize on students' natural love for Halloween with this fun creative writing activity! The writing activity begins when students roll story element dice (setting, character, obstacle, and a story starter) to create a random set of story components. Once students have their story elements, they'll plan and write a spooky story by combining all of the spooky parts that they rolled. Of course, this lesson taps into students' natural love of scary stories while helping them develop critical writing skills. You'll find a detailed planning page in the resource to help students outline their stories before they write their own. The cubes and guide not only make the activity more fun, they also set students up for success! You can find this lesson here...and I'll provide all the links at the bottom of the post. Speaking of celebrating special days, if you're in the mood for even more ideas, be sure to check out this mega-freebie filled with 40 pages of ideas for celebrating special days in the classroom. Freebies? Yes! Please! I'm always trying to give students opportunities to read and analyze poems. So, it's no wonder that I put together this FREE poem analysis lesson! In this FREE Halloween lesson students will analyze the Halloween-themed poem “Mr. Macklin’s Jack O’Lantern” by David McCord. Then, they’ll record their understanding and analysis of the poem in an interactive flip book. The lesson encourages multiple readings of the poem which leads to a deeper understanding and comprehension of the text. While analyzing the poem, students will identify the sequence of events, its mood, and elements of figurative language. Students will support their analysis with evidence from the poem. McCord’s poem is a perfect celebration of Halloween and the flip books make analyzing poetry fun! I may have saved the best idea for last! This lesson is such a fun and educational way to celebrate Halloween. That's because this lesson gives students a trick AND treat! In this resource you’ll find a “Halloween Fun” activity. This one is the ‘TRICK’. In this activity students need to read the instructions very carefully. However, most students do not read the entire set of directions before beginning (that’s the trick). That means that students will follow the directions to create a Halloween drawing and complete a figurative language activity before they realize that they only needed to do the first 2 steps of the 16 step activity. Wondering where the ‘TREAT’ comes in? Well, this resource is also filled with a nonfiction passage and questions about the history of Halloween. When all the questions are answered students will reveal a “No Homework” message. Of course, this is their treat. FYI: Since, the Halloween Fun activity requires students to write figurative language, you may want to teach this Figurative Language 5-Day Unit FIRST. This free resource is a super fun way to get into the spirit of Halloween! Plus, students will practice figurative language and reading comprehension skills! If you're looking for even more teaching ideas for October, here's another FREEBIE for you... And of course, if you love free lesson plans and ideas for the classroom, be sure to sign up for this 40-page Seasonal Sampler! Freebies? Yes! Please! Here's a quick round-up of the links: --- Spooky Story Writing Lesson --- Halloween Poem Analysis --- Trick and Treat Reading Passage --- Figurative Language Unit --- October Plan Book --- Veterans Day Lesson Wishing you a very happy Halloween, Mary Beth P.S. Veterans Day is right around the corner. Here's an engaging and meaningful lesson. First, students collect facts about Veterans Day for their Doodle Infographic. Then, they write a solider poem. LEARN MORE HERE.
Favorite Halloween lessons to engage middle and high school students #HalloweenLessons #MiddleSchoolTeacher #HighSchoolTeacher
Students practice sequencing story events with this worksheet. Cut out the sentences into strips and then build your story by arranging them in the best order.
A list of five no-prep Halloween activities and mini-units for busy teachers. Use these ideas in your upper elementary classroom around Halloween time!
Work on pre-writing and pre-reading skills with this free popsicle left-to-right printable activity.
Get your students excited about writing with these October Writing Prompts. Opinion, Narrative and Informative prompts in fun Halloween themes.
I'm sure that this time of year your classroom is stocked full of Halloween-themed picture books! Keep students learning, even when they've had too much Halloween candy with this quick story elements graphic organizer! Use my "Haunted House Story Elements" graphic organizer for any Halloween-themed book your students are reading! There are two graphic organizers provided - one with lines for older students to write in the story elements and one without lines for younger students to draw the story elements. Click here to grab your copy! Enjoy!
5 Fun Halloween Crafts for Kids that are a great way to promote writing in the primary classroom. They also make a great bulletin board.
In this post, I want to share a classic writing activity: two-sentence horror stories! This activity will both engage and teach!
Fun ideas for teaching adjectives and descriptive writing that are just right for October and Halloween week in the primary classroom.
The Gruffalo lesson plans for K-2. Engaging 5-day lesson plans with differentiated reading response, vocabulary, sentence study, and a craft for this fun story!
Check out this post for fun Halloween activities to do in the upper elementary classroom that also teach. Includes some freebies and lots of ideas!
Don't lose your head over reading comprehension this Halloween...try it with Ichabod Crane and the story of Sleepy Hollow.
Part of our social studies standards are to learn how cultures from around the world affect our culture. There's no better way to start this standard than to learn about cultures from around the world. The problem for me was how to teach the students about several cultures within the time that we had available. This is when I thought of a cultural fair. I talked my team into teaching each of their classes about a different country and some of the different cultures within that country. We had the students research: food, art, music, clothing, customs, and language. Each class put together a science board with some of the research. We also hung other research on the walls outside of our classrooms. This way the students had plenty of room to read about the different cultures. We chose to hold the fair the day before Thanksgiving break. The cultural fair was so engaging, the students were sure to learn all the way through the end of the day. We weren't so sure that would happen with our every day lessons. Each class prepared one of the more popular food or drinks from their country. I bought prepackaged food from Ikea for my country. This helps to satisfy the rule in some schools of prepackaged food. The year before we had a parent make our food at home. (I did not serve the pear drink.) Each classroom can have a quick craft inside for the students to complete. We made floral headbands for Sweden. Most countries have flowers in their culture so this is a wonderful go to craft. If you search on Pinterest, you will find a plethora of cultural crafts. We also used the folders that you see below to hold all of our research in reading and writing. Every student was given a passport with the countries listed inside. The students were to record details from every country that they visited. So we allowed students to roam the hall. They went into the rooms to enjoy food and a craft. They read information on the countries outside of the rooms. Their teachers held them accountable for details by checking their passports. We had parent volunteers to come in to assist the students in moving throughout the hall and into the appropriate rooms. If you can't do a whole grade level Culture Fair, you can set up centers in your classroom. You can have groups of students research different countries and share with each other. Putting together the materials for this unit took quite a while. If you don't have time to put them together, check out the units below in my store.
20 lessons, resources, & ideas for Fall in ELA - Reading and Writing in Autumn for grades 4-8 and 6-12 English language arts class.
Fun engaging Halloween activities and centers for preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten. Take the Halloween theme in all your classroom centers with these Halloween activities.
Are you looking for Writing lesson or bulletin board ideas? These no prep writing crafts are ideal for your literacy lessons!
Guided Reading 101 in kindergarten and 1st grade! Lesson ideas, planning, organization, grouping students and more for print and teach lessons.
Printable Halloween Hidden hidden picture activities can add a thrilling twist to your Halloween festivities, keeping kids engaged and enhancing their attention to detail..
Halloween activities for school can be both a blessing and a curse. By finding ways to keep this time of year fun AND academic, you'll have a major win!
Halloween can be a major distraction for high school students and even more frustrating for teachers. For a while, I tried (unsuccessfully) to carry on with business as usual, despite the costume contests, treats, and even some tricks. It usually wasn't very successful though. Then, I realized maybe I could channel that Halloween excitement for
Eight different grammar exercises devoted to the learning of modals verbs, either simple modals or perfect modals, an essential content for A2 students. Key provided. - ESL worksheets
Teach students all about spiders with these creepy crawly lessons. These science lessons are fantastic for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students. Learn facts about spiders.
An easy review of present perfect time words. The Halloween theme livens up the subject matter of present perfect time words. Students must learn these words to that they can use this valuable tense properly. Clip art is from MyCuteGraphics.com - ESL worksheets
Ok, my friends... I'm sure you've all seen Reagan's visual lesson plans that she got from Deedee.... Well.... A few of us decided to give it a try too! Plus, this might help me to be better planned out and ready for Mondays - ha! Well... Most of my plans come from other fabulous bloggers out there! I've found so many fabulous things, that this week, I decided not to make a unit, just little things here and there, which I've included links for... When you click on the plans, it'll take you to the PDF, and you can click on the pictures and links to go to that product. Make sure you DOWNLOAD the document so you can get to all the links! This isn't EVERYTHING that I do, but I didn't want to bombard you with it all at once... For Phonics- I will be using the Phonics Poem book from scholastic - LOVE it! And it's really helping with fluency. We'll also be doing some activities with Room on the Broom - click the pics in the plans to grab the freebies! And I'll be doing Christie's unit for Scaredy-Cat, Splat! For my centers this week - I've got a little something from everyone in there - LOVE it! I also made a quick little compare/contrast writing activity - click the pic in the plans to grab this freebie too! For Writing?? Starting with Lori's Halloween writing activity and then I'm doing the same book from Debbie that I did last year - except this year, I'll be teaching it instead of my intern - In fact...this is about when she took over completely, so now I get to teach during my favorite time of year - yay! Not that I didn't LOVE having her, but you know...as a teacher, there are just certain things you like to teach and October - December is my favorite time. Remember - you can get to their products when you download the plans! NOW... For math and Science/Social Studies As for my actual Whole Groups plans? I have an idea, BUT, I don't like to set in stone what I'm doing because if they don't get one of the lessons, I'm not going to move on to the next one...And this week, we're working on 2-digit plus 2-digit addition, so I'm sure it'll take longer than the series gives me to teach it. BUT, I am going to be using my Tasty Facts packs and my Numbers Every Day pack each day! For Science - we're going to be finishing up the LAST of the Bat unit And we're going to be review habitats and working on my Habitats for Sale activity. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ and one last thing! My girl, Holly is having a giveaway! Just a few days left - so go enter and wish her happy bloggy-birthday!
Children will use their creative writing skills to continue the story in this fiction writing exercise.
Check out this FREE Halloween haunted house writing lesson called "In the Haunted House"! Create spooky sentences, learn Halloween vocabulary using senses and positional words, and get creative!
It's a reading about the Incredibles, the objective is to practice superlative and comparative adjectives through different types of activities: questions, true or false and a wordsearch to work on spelling. Happy Easter to every one! :) - ESL worksheets
I love reading Chris Van Allsburg's books to my students. The Widow's Broom is one of my favorites, and perfect as a Halloween read aloud for upper grades.
Learn the easy steps to model shared writing in your kindergarten or first grade writers workshop. Includes ideas and examples for your writing lesson plans
With these Spider Worksheets for Elementary Students, your child will have a fun and engaging homeschool arachnid lesson this Halloween season!
Halloween is a fantastic motivator for getting kids to write! That's why I have created a few things that you can use to get kids enthusia...
I love teaching students the skill of writing suspense during the spooky Halloween season. This is a great time for introducing suspenseful mentor texts and writing suspenseful narratives. I love having students read spooky tales in preparation for writing their own spooky tales.
This Halloween Witches Spell Printable is both a coloring page and a fun creative activity. We even give you the printable for free to download and use at home! Around here, Halloween is one of
Try some mystery writing activities with your kids! Create traditional mapped mysteries, paper bag detective stories, or puzzle pictures.
I am all done with parent conferences and it feels great! I had the most terrific year and I’m so happy to share my students’ progress with their parents. During parent conference time, I always love to have lots of student work to display. I absolutely love to incorporate student pictures into student work. This ... Read More about Silhouette Autobiographies and Read Across America
