Around Halloween you can keep your students’ attention if you build lessons around the holiday. Let students unleash some holiday spirit and at the same time develop writing skills by writing Halloween poems.
Halloween: Time to Make Poetry Fun
Too often students find writing poetry intimidating. This lesson helps students have fun with writing poems and develop their creativity. This project will help students learn there are many different genres of poems by writing Halloween poems. Let students pick the theme and tone of the poem.
You can also let them pick the age range for the audience of the poem. This ensures that some poems will be cute and others scary. Some poems will be about frightening monsters and others will be about the joy of trick or treating. They may even want to create an abstract poem that describes the “colors” or symbols of Halloween. This lesson helps students learn that creating poems is fun and gives them practice making decisions.
Writing Ideas
You may want to light that spark of creativity by reading scary Halloween stories or putting some cute or scary Halloween decorations up in the room. Show the students that there are many different ways to focus on the holiday of Halloween.
Ask students to share their favorite memories of Halloween. You may also wish to have them bring in a picture of them dressed in a Halloween costume from prior years. These pictures could be used to create a Halloween board to serve as a writing prompt.
If you are able to find a sponsor to donate funds or pumpkins you could also bring in small pumpkins to have students decorate them with paint or magic marker. A small arts-and-craft project related to the writing topic gives students time to brainstorm ideas. Students of all ages enjoy holiday-related projects.
Also, it is fun to brainstorm writing ideas by asking students to put words on the board that remind them of Halloween. Students will then have a diverse list of words to choose from when creating a poem.
Poem Structure
Allow students to pick their own poem structure. The poem may rhyme or not. It may have long or short lines. When typed, the poem may form the shape of a pumpkin or a ghost or any design they wish to use. You may wish to mandate a certain number of lines just to make certain that students write a full poem.
Poem Setting
Tell the students that their poem does not have to be set in the local area or the current time. They may choose any setting and any era for the time of the poem.
