Halloween Writing Activity

It's that time of year - Halloween. What a great time of year to teach mood and suspense in writing and film. Kids love scary stories and movies. As educators we need to embrace there love and incorporate some fun into our lessons.

As a writing teacher, I am always struggling to find ways for students to write, and to enjoy it. Students all to often are afraid to try to write creatively because they may fail. I believe the fear of failure in students derives from high stakes testing and all too often high stakes writing. Students need to feel comfortable writing in a low stakes environment. They need to feel that what they are doing is fun! If you can get kids to buy into the lesson you will have a much easier time in life.

So below here is my mini-lesson for Halloween:

Mini-preview:
- Students will group write several Halloween stories all at once. They will try to create mood, develop characters, and establish suspense.

1. Set-up:
1. Students needs to get in groups of three or four
2. Every student needs a piece of paper
3. Prompts:
1. on the board write:
1. It was a dark and stormy night
2. "What was that...I heard something"  
2. Lesson:
1. Every student selects one of the prompts and begins to write their story.
1. Students should focus on creating the setting, the mood, and the introduce the characters
2. After five minutes students rotate papers to the right
1. Students should begin to introduce the conflict of their new story. They must maintain the style of the original author
3. After five minutes students should rotate again
1. Students should try to resolve the conflict
4. After five minutes students should rotate again
1. Conclude the story...they may add a cliffhanger
3. Afterwards:
1. Students should read their stories and vote on the best one
4. Benefits:
1. Students will be writing for 20 minutes solid
1. building stamina
2. Students must maintain the original author's style and intent
1. work on style, and purpose
3. Establish mood
1. mood and setting
4. Go through a plot chart
5. Optional:
1. Music:
1. I usually play Pandora's scary symphonies channel during this lesson. It helps them buy into the lesson 

I believe this is a great lesson. Give it a shot.

Summer Assignments

I know, I know. We are coming to the end of the first marking period. Why on earth would I talk about the summer!

Here's why? How much time out of the nine weeks did you waste in the beginning of the year, if you are like most probably a lot. You asses your students, go over rules, play get to you games and finally, maybe you get to literacy by week three.

Fifteen days of wasted time.

Oh and kids are asking for suggestions, you hardly know them...what to do.

This brief reflection actually can help save you time down the road. I give my students a summer reading assignment to help prevent that summer slide we hear oh so much about. I will be be honest, a lot of the assignment is taken ala cart from various other summer assignments so it isn't perfect...but it is perfect for me.

Assignment in a nut shell:

1. At the end of the year I do an extremely brief book talk for my incoming students on about 10 to 13 books. 
1. The idea is to just pique their interest
2. Pick high quality books, that have a mix of topics/genres/length/etc.
3. The list is breathing document...if something is "old" to kids they won't read it. Keep it fun for them! It's their summer!
2. The students read two books of their choice and fill out a simple table form:
1. That contains:
1. Author
2. Three Important quotes
3. Conflict
4. Purpose
5. And a signature
3. The very first day of school we group up based on our books and in their group they:
1. Make a poster combining all of their ideas
1. They must vote on the three best quotes
2. What was the conflict, purpose etc? 
2. Then they share their book with  the class

The students love this! It usually takes a day or two, and while they are doing it I can take time to circulate the room and get to know their reading habits, and talk with them about the books. Every year without fail the students get each other to read books they would never like. 

It amazes me how this happens. The kids start asking questions about the books, They borrow from each other. It's great! 

As a teacher the benefits are great. 

• Get to know the kids in a relaxed setting
• Set the tone that literacy and reading are important in my classroom
• Reading can be social and fun!
• I don't waste time. 

That last point I want to hit on real fast before I go. Think about this conversation. In the first few days, I've introduced conflict, purpose, and close reading without every forcing it on students. They may have disagreed over the quotes but they had to defend it. 

I strongly urge you to try it! Think about where you'd be if you didn't waste those first few precious weeks with get to know you activities and instead used a get to know you literacy activity. 

I follow the activity with literary history...which is a post for another day!