Needing a Halloween writing lesson that builds important ELA skills? Here is a Halloween haunted house writing lesson for you!
Halloween Writing Kids will Scream About
This Halloween writing lesson called ‘In the Haunted House’ helps students build their vocabulary, use their senses, and practice their writing skills.
Halloween Writing: Prewriting
We start the Halloween haunted house writing lesson by using our imaginations and brainstorming Halloween words that we would see in a haunted house on Halloween night. We come up with a list of things we see, hear, and feel on Halloween night. I record our ideas on this anchor chart I created to look like a haunted house. The original anchor chart is from Fabulous in First.
This anchor chart helps students when it is time to write their sentences for their Halloween haunted house writing. We use this Halloween vocabulary list as a reference.
Halloween Writing: Process
We create our Halloween sentences on this writing template that starts each sentence with “In the Haunted House, I saw a …” For the first four sentences, they have to fill in a word or two from our vocabulary poster. For example, “In the Haunted House, I saw a cat on the roof.”
We are also practicing and building their knowledge of positional words. For each sentence we complete, we have to illustrate its position in the haunted house.
There are also two complete sentences to write and include their own Halloween vocabulary and positional words.
This is a valuable writing activity in my class because students are choosing their own words from the ready-made list and are feeling successful at it. We make sure to also use end our sentences with periods.
They also like being able to add the gruesome and spooky Halloween creatures and characters that kids love to their writing and pictures.
Once their sentences are complete and their pictures are done, they can colour their haunted house Halloween pictures. We usually hang our Halloween haunted house writing with some Halloween crafts and decor in the classroom.
FREE Haunted House Writing Template
Interested in completing this Halloween writing activity in your classroom? You can grab and download a FREE ‘In the Haunted House’ writing template pack HERE.
More Halloween Learning Activities
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I can’t access the first haunted house activity shown here. It’s not in the pdf.
The pdf contains a variation of the template seen above.
I home school, I love this idea so much. I know it’s similar to what teachers usually do but I think what made it click for me is the conjunction with sentences, and that the kids feel confident using vocabulary they decided on. Truly appreciate this post and the template.
You are so welcome! Happy Halloween!