Halloween Fun/ Nonfiction

     I ended up having to spice up my lessons with some Halloween additives. It is never detrimental to always have a back up plan. Students often become bored or lulled by the daily routine, and sometimes we have to be creative. Enticing seventh graders to get excited about the reading was actually like pulling teeth from a raging cougar. Okay..... SO IT WASN'T that hard!

      I have them some nonfiction to read about that concerned what Halloween is really about. My students weren't really enthused to learn about this material until I found this link that provided a short film to go with it. 
Students enjoyed reading about the Salem witch trials and learning about the tests that were given. In turn each group was responsible for explaining one assigned person's death that they had to look up. Some of these people were men, which added to the overall conclusion of the class: Most people were accused due to past misdoing.

Middle schools students love to read nonfiction if they can grasp something about the concept beforehand. I let them read a section about the trials and what they put these young women through. It was intriguing to discover their conclusions. Many of my students exclaimed that they too would have been condemned. 




      I also had they make a questionnaire about "You May be a Werewolf if you..." This was more than entertaining to read. My favorite was, "You may be a werewolf if you wake up and your girlfriend is dead and their is dog fur in your bed." I ended up having to tell them to keep their questionnaires PG13 due to the on going topic of what they were discovering after waking up the next morning. Teaching is always a learning process for both the teacher and the students. I have come to discover that I have to be more specific as to what is OKAY to write down on a paper like this. It was all fun and there was nothing to really worry about. 
     Some of my students had the opportunity to epitaphs. The best one so far was, "Here lies Ms. Garland who loves her students to read and write, it's to bad she never saw her impending fight!" Out from it he had drew a book devouring me! lol  All I could do was laugh.  Epitaphs aren't as easy as everyone thinks they are. To provide some differentiation in my lesson I also had a poem starter and several different creative writing activities. I only gave them one class period to do this and that should have been enough allotted time to complete the task, but it wasn't. 

I hope you enjoy the pictures of our October work. My students worked really hard on this. If you have any suggestions or anything you would like to add please feel free to comment. 
     
            I also let them have some figurative language practice and they got some experience with poetry. I borrowed the lesson from teacherspayteachers.com and it was a great lesson. I don't know who had more fun? Me or my students?   

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