Holidays can be such exciting times in the classroom. However, with all the craziness of costumes and trick-or-treating happening, it can be tricky to get students to maintain focus so that the entire day, or week, is not lost! Instead of sticking to our regular lesson plans and routines, over the years I created some go to ELA Halloween Activities that teach the standards while maintaining that Halloween excitement that my students always have. Here are some of my favorite ELA Halloween activities that my students can’t get enough of.
Halloween ELA Escape Room: Making Inferences
My students absolutely LOVE escape rooms. I used to dread them because they usually take SO much time to prep. However, I didn’t want to give them up because I saw how much my students benefited from them and truly enjoyed them. Therefore, I started making my own extremely low prep escape rooms.
Now, I literally just print the pages to pass out to students and the fun begins. I’ve even recently transformed my ELA Halloween escape room to be digital, so now my only prep is just posting the link to my Google Classroom and hyping my students up.
This Halloween Escape Room challenges students to find the exit to the haunted house they got stuck in before time is too late. In order to escape, they must complete five different ELA inferring challenges, and solve the clues to move on to the next challenge which will eventually lead them to the exit.
Completing the escape room is fun and engaging as is. I find that all my students are always super motivated to find the escape the entire time, which is a teacher WIN in my book!
However, sometimes when I’m feeling a little bit extra, I may even put black table clothes on the desks, add some fake spider webs around the room, and play some spooky music to make it a VERY mini, easy, and inexpensive room transformation.
Click here to see the Escape the Haunted House escape room in my store.
Finish the Story Halloween Writing Activity
Looking for ways to motivate an unmotivated writer? Especially on a holiday? I love using Finish the Story activities with my students.
They’re so helpful with engaging my struggling writers to write and be creative. No more staring at a blank page when asked to write. I find that they actually get excited to write when the story beginning is already there for them to use! It really takes the pressure off of them to come up with their own idea to write about, which is arguably the hardest part about writing.
Again, this activity is super low prep. (Can you tell that’s my style yet?) I just print out and make copies of the story starter, or once again, assign digitally via google classroom.
Another thing I love about this Finish the Story halloween activity is that students often mimic the style of writing that was written for them. I see my struggling writers rise to the occasion to match the writing style presented in the opening of the story. They are also so proud of their work as a result.
One thing that is a must when we do this activity is sharing their stories with the class. It’s so amazing to see how many different ways one story can go.
Every year my students come up with the most creative and descriptive stories that just blow me away! It’s some of the best writing they produce all year.
Click here to check out this Finish the Story Halloween Activity in my shop.
Halloween Riddles: An Inferring Activity {Freebie}
Who doesn’t love a good riddle?
In my classroom, we constantly tell jokes and riddles. It’s the perfect way to practice the important skill of inferring in an engaging way. Students use their schema and clues to figure out the answers to the jokes and riddles.
For this favorite Halloween activity, my students read the clues to determine which halloween object or person is being described in the riddle. Then they decode their answers to figure out the secret phrase.
In years we have a little extra time, I have my students write their own Halloween riddles for the rest of the class to solve. Again, they never cease to amaze me with their creativity!
You download these Halloween Riddles for FREE below so you can try them out with your class this year.
FREE HALLOWEEN
RIDDLES ACTIVITY
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Halloween Roll & Write Activity
One of my favorite writing centers to use the week of Halloween is a Roll & Write activity center. Students roll a die to determine their Halloween related story plan.
It’s simple, low prep, academic, and my students just love it. There’s something about adding a prop like a die that increases engagement like crazy.
Again, one of the things my students and I love about this Halloween writing center activity is that it takes the pressure to plan an original narrative off students by crafting the plan for them. It’s much easier to fill in the blanks and write a story when the planning phase has been given to you already.
Click here to check out my Halloween Roll & Write activity in my store.
And there you go, my favorite academic ELA Halloween activities that my students love! Which resources are your favorite? Let me know in the comments below. 🙂
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