Halloween and Thanksgiving are perfect times of the year to incorporate exciting and creative activities within your ELA classroom. There are three things I know my middle school English students love to do-color, write creative stories and learn about the “real” history of different events. At times, it is hard to find activities like these for middle school, especially since coloring is more of an elementary level activity.
I wanted to help you with your lesson search, and provide you with unique, entertaining activities for Halloween and Thanksgiving. These activities incorporate coloring, creative, and other fun activities your students wish they did more of in the classroom. In addition, these activities will have your students:
-Recalling information
-Practicing their reading comprehension skills
-Practicing their multiple-choice abilities and test-taking skills
-Engaging their higher level thinking and analytical abilities
Halloween & Thanksgiving Activities
Halloween Reading Comprehension Color-by-Number:
Learn about the history of Halloween with this article. Students will answer multiple choice questions that will correlate with a color grid. They will color in the grid according to their answers, and it will reveal a spooky character!
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe–
Introduce your students to the haunting poem, “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, and have your students learn, analyze, critically think and discuss this poem with guided vocabulary and comprehension questions. Next, have your students dive into Poe’s poetry writing, analyzing his style and formatting by creating their own poetry!
This activity gives the students the opportunity to write Dracula’s perspective of his life using the music of Taylor Swift’s song, “Bad Blood”. We all know the stereotypes of a vampire, but what if that is not really the story? Your students have the opportunity to explore this question, creating a song parody with Dracula’s real story.
FREE-100 Descriptive Halloween Word List:
Here are 100+ words to help your students write more descriptively for Halloween. These words are perfect for short story and creative writing!
Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Activity & Turkey Craftivity
This activity will have your students comprehending a non-fiction article, reviewing citations and using the citations in their answers. In addition, they will also ponder over what is important to them in their lives, what they are grateful for, what they wish for in the future, what they hope for, and how they feel about their life/family/world. Secondly, your students will transfer all their information to the turkey template.
In the end, the students will all an adorable colored turkey that shows evidence of the article, as well as their thinking!
