5 Last Minute Spooky ELA Lessons

If the thought of teaching on Halloween is sending chills down your spine, check out these 5 last minute spooky ELA ideas. They are all stand alone activities and perfect for a one day and done lesson. ⁠

Idea 1: Read "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe

Introduce the idea of unreliable narrator with an abridged and adapted version of "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe, a spooky story by the master of horror. 

Reading a short story that isn't centered around Halloween is a great way to spread the spooky spirit if incorporating the holidays into your classroom is against school policy or just inconsiderate due to students' different religious backgrounds.

The lesson includes point of view practice as well as text dependent and creative writing activities after students finish reading. Students will love reimagining the story from an alternate character's perspective.

Idea 2: Read "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe

Dig into an eerie classic with a close reading of the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe paired with viewing its rendition from The Simpsons, in which Homer is haunted by Bart in bird form. Like "The Black Cat," it is a great text for evaluating the reliability of a narrator.

Another possibility is pairing it with Amanda Lovelace’s piece titled "The Raven (Remix)," a blackout poetry contribution featured in the YA Edgar Allan Poe-inspired anthology His Hideous Heart: Thirteen of Edgar Allan Poe’s Most Unsettling Tales Reimagined edited by Dahlia Adler.

After reading students can tackle one of two text dependent writing prompts and create a six cell cartoon strip summarizing the poem.

Idea 3: Make A Tombstone

Ask students to summarize or synthesize learning from multiple sources to create a tombstone for an author, character or historical figure.

This free activity can be used as an extension activity or an assessment of students' knowledge. Other creative possibilities could be the “death” of a word, expression, book, or bad habit.

If you do this activity in the days leading up to Halloween, you can cut out and hang the tombstones to spookify your classroom.

Idea 4: Write Two Sentence Horror Stories

Work through the writing process of brainstorming, drafting, revising, and producing a final draft in just one class period with two sentence horror stories.

I put on some spooky playlists, show students a few examples, and then push students to write and rewrite, as they look at their word choice to choose stronger verbs and more specific nouns, and to add sensory details. 

Some years I've had student write their final drafts on paper and illustrate them and other years I've had student design Slides with their two sentence horror stories to make it easy to present them to the class.

Idea 5: Learn About The History of Halloween

Focus on the history of Halloween with a nonfiction close reading that makes connections between an NPR article and FDR's speech at Madison Square Garden.

Seasonal nonfiction close readings like this one are an easy way to incorporate nonfiction texts that your students will actually be interested in reading. A rigorous articles from National Public Radio is paired with ten questions aligned with the Informational Common Core standards. 

Seven engaging suggested after reading activities make cross curricular connections, and include service learning and project based learning ideas.

Exposing Students to New Books of Interest: 4 Things I Do Throughout the Year

Over the years I've built up my classroom library from just two bookshelves to over 1,600 books. A bigger classroom library means more books for students to choose from, but it can also make it difficult for students to select a book they are interested in.⁠ 

At the start of the school year, I spend a considerable amount of time making sure students understand the different genres that I use to organize my classroom library and where to find those genres (and additional formats like graphic novels, verse novels, manga, and short story collections). But having students understand which genres they are interested in is just the beginning of helping them to find books they want to read.

To expose students to books in our classroom library and help them build a TBR (to be read) list throughout the year, here's four things I do routinely.

The 5 Focus Areas for my March Madness Poetry Tournament

Hosting a March Madness Poetry Tournament is one way I liven up what could otherwise be a blah month. The weather is still crummy and Spring Break seems far off.⁠

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But even more importantly, this intense focus on poetry builds my students' comfort levels with reading and understanding poetry while also providing an opportunity to review learning from earlier in the year.⁠

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As we progress through the tournament, here’s the terms and skills  I focus on. 

My 4 Criteria For Choosing Poems for My March Madness Poetry Tournament

The starting point for hosting a March Madness Poetry Tournament is picking out the poems. You can go with classic or contemporary, you can pair poems by the same poet or based on themes or topics, you can choose the poems or let students submit recommendations, you could even throw in song lyrics! There's no one right way to make your picks, but here is how I've decided on the poems I use.

4 Reasons To Host A March Madness Poetry Tournament In Your Classroom

I’ve hosted a March Madness poetry tournament for six years in my classroom now. It is something I look forward to every year and former students look back on with fondness when they stop in my classroom and see the bracket covering our bulletin board. Here's 4 reasons I keep doing it.

Writer's Workshop: Those Who Raise Us Poetry

"Those Who Raise Us" poetry has a narrative focus but also allows for deep reflection as students are growing older and beginning to make connections between love, sacrifice, boundaries, and ultimately gratitude to those who contributed to raising us. This writer’s workshop would be ideal around Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day as a gift to those who raised us. Connecting with families in this way would be so special and appreciated. If you are trying writer's workshop for the first time, you'll want to read this overview post, but if you have done it before, read on.

Writer's Workshop: Can't Buy Me Happiness Narratives

The narrative genre is an excellent choice for working through a writing workshop. As adolescents, the meaning of love and trust is forming in an undeniable way. Our students are developing the meaning of mutual respect and authentic connection. Diving into the genre of “Can’t Buy Me Happiness” is a fulfilling way to write narratives, but also explore deep emotions and valuable lessons along the way proving that material items do not buy happiness. If you haven't run a writer's workshop before, you'll want to read this overview post, but if you already have experience with it, read on.

Writer's Workshop: Coming of Age Poetry

A successful writing workshop unit is writing coming of age poetry. Not only does this allow for authentic voices, but it is also highly motivating for students, and there are many powerful mentor texts to build thinking around coming of age writing. Middle and high school students are living this daily, and encouraging them to use their writing voice to share their successes and struggles is beyond powerful. If writer's workshop is new to you, you'll want to read this overview post, but if you are an old hat, read on.

Writer's Workshop for Middle & High School Students

I first learned about the writer's workshop model during a summer institute with my local chapter of The National Writing Project. We engaged in lessons from Linda Christensen's books Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-Imagining the Language Arts Classroom and Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word, which I was able to transfer directly into my high school classroom the following school year.

I loved the use of relevant mentor texts to draw out students' own stories plus the emphasis on revision. In sharing their work with their peers, students received direct feedback but also learned from seeing and hearing each others' writing "moves." If you are interested in a more engageing writing process for your middle or high school students, this post is for you.

The Most Popular Books In My Middle School Classroom Library This Year

My classroom library is the heart of my classroom. My school doesn’t have a school library so the books in my classroom are it for my sixth grade students as far as immediately accessible books. We do independent reading daily in my classroom so I want there to be plenty of books for them to access.

Last year I started taking a closer look at the top checkouts in my classroom library through a report I exported from Booksource  (the library management system I use; it’s free!). While I always have a general sense of what is popular and what hasn’t left the shelf, I liked being able to look at the actual data to make decisions about what books to add or weed from my classroom library.

Read on for the top book checkouts by genre (plus graphic novels) from my classroom library this past school year.

5 Things I Tried This School Year

At the end of the school year, before it starts to run into all the previous years, I like to take a moment to reflect on the new things I tried this year, what worked and what didn't. This will be my fourth year of reflecting this way and it has been so helpful to look back at my past posts to see how much I have grown as an educator and to see which practices I want to continue, which I want to try again differently, and which I want to let go of because they no longer serve me. 

Screen Free Travel Activities That Are Kid & Teacher Mom Approved

Between time on the plane, time in the car and time spent waiting at restaurants, kids need things to do on trips. We are generally a screen free family, so you won't find us bringing tablets with us (one of our flights did have screens built into the seats and we did let our girls watch movies because that is something we do at home). I like to bring a variety of tried and true activities that I know will be a hit as well as some new activities to change things up.