In the time leading up to Halloween, we will be sharing ideas for celebrating fall/Halloween in the classroom and showcasing some of our products that are perfect for this time of year.
Halloween in the classroom doesn’t bring me a lot of fond memories. Crazy out of control kids, getting a classroom full of kids changed into costumes with one bathroom, parents all over the place, parties with craziness and sugar, the year we had a lice outbreak and the kids had costumes with wigs and hats, whole school costume parades…ugh. It is no wonder I dreaded Halloween as a teacher. I always fought an internal battle of whether or not to include and incorporate Halloween into my curriculum to feed my students’ excitement or to down play it and try to keep them as calm as possible that time of year. I always tried to find a way to include curriculum related Halloween ideas so I could justify what we were doing in class. Here are a few ideas I used:
-Picture Books – I
set out my Halloween books for my students to look at during the day. I also tried to read some of these during our
mini lessons depending on what subjects we were currently working on in reading
workshop. If I couldn’t get it to fit, I
would read some during my read aloud time instead of a chapter book.
-Make My Pumpkin –
I set out construction paper and every student made a
pumpkin/jack-o-lantern. When they were
finished, I would pair them up and they would spend time writing a letter to
their partner describing how to make their pumpkin. We usually had just finished our letter
writing unit so it was good practice for their writing skills. Some years, I had them write more of a how to
instead of a letter. The partners read
the letters (without seeing the pumpkin) and tried to recreate the pumpkin. At
the end they showed each other their pumpkins to see how well they followed
directions.
-Task cards –
Task cards can be used in a variety of ways.
They can be a center during math workshop, daily/morning work, an entry
in a math journal, a whole class game, assessments, preassessments, reviews and
more. Make it a little more fun by using
a Halloween set of task cards. These are
two sets that I’ve made. The math one
includes addition, subtraction, telling time, story problems and place value problems and
would be ideal for second or third grade.
The other set is for language arts and includes parts of speech, punctuation,
contractions and correcting common errors in sentences.
Hope some of these ideas are helpful to you in your
classroom. Enjoy the craziness that the
holiday brings into the classroom. Can't wait to read what some of my blogging partners do for Halloween in the classroom.
Happy Teaching,
Sara
Graphics courtesy of www.mycutegraphics.com
Font courtesy of www.kevinandamanda.com
Graphics courtesy of www.mycutegraphics.com
Font courtesy of www.kevinandamanda.com
