Halloween is the perfect excuse to carve 🎃 out some time for new, exciting activities in your classroom. Personally, we always use Halloween as a way to get students engaged in old material. AKA – all those foundational skills you review all year long. So, we wanted to share Halloween activities for school that will add excitement to the classroom, while targeting those critical skills.
By the way, we also call this thematic learning. We wrote a blog about the benefits of thematic learning, if you want to learn more. Essentially, it’s when you plan lessons around a common theme. Overall, engagement is improved and consequently, students retain more knowledge when you use thematic learning.
Who woulda thought that Halloween activities for school could have such a powerful impact on the classroom?!
Halloween Retell Activity
If you teach grades K-2nd or are working on pre-writing & reading skills, then you are going to want to get your hands on this Halloween retell resource. By the end of the activities, your students will be able to retell the eerie-sistible stories using a beginning, middle, and end format.
For a complete lesson, kick off the assignment with a How to Retell a Story YouTube video. This kid-friendly, interactive video will help you review the content in a new way (and save your breath).
Then, students will work through various Halloween retell activities. Your students will be bewitched with stories like “Too Much Candy,” “A Magical Spell” and “Haunted House”. This resource is scaffolded to take students from foundational knowledge to mastery. They will start with simply understanding beginning, middle, end to sequencing Halloween-themed pictures and eventually writing their own story retells! Get ready to be spooked by their creations!
Halloween Sentence Writing Activity
K-3rd grade educators, where are you at? Have we got the Halloween activity for school that will have you squashing those writing standards in no time…
You know how it seems like your students can never write in complete sentences?!?! We know because we’ve been there. Let’s put an end to fragments and run-ons with this Halloween Sentence Writing resource.
Of course, you can start the activity with a YouTube video on How to Write a Sentence. Whether you are teaching sentence writing for the first time or reviewing, this will definitely come in candy 🍭
Then, you’ll move to the scaffolded and differentiated activities. Students will start with simply identifying and recognizing complete sentences to actually writing their own! We included fun writing prompts for Halloween to spice things up. You can keep calm and pumpkin on knowing that students will be engaged in the activity!
We also differentiated several of the activities, so you can choose from multiple choice or open response. This not only helps you differentiate between student-levels, but grade-levels as well. Perfect for those teaching multiple grades- sometimes in the same group!!! Talk about spooky. 👻
Halloween Vocabulary Activity
If you teach ESL/ENL or students in lower elementary, we highly recommend this Halloween vocabulary activity. You can use it at the beginning of your Halloween unit to aid with comprehension, improve spelling, and get students familiar with uncommon words.
To start, we made this frighteningly fun Halloween Vocabulary YouTube video. It includes lots of imagery and repetition to get students familiar with Halloween concepts. This works as a center station, or you can get the whole class involved in discussing one of their favorite howl-days.
After students have watched the video, you can reinforce the new words with a vocabulary matching activity. This is great practice, but also ends up being a reference resource for students or a perfect addition to your vocabulary wall! It’s hands-on as students will cut and glue the words below an image. Not only will students enjoy the activity, but they’ll have more vocabulary (over 25 words) under their belt – so they can talk and write about Halloween in detail!
And oh my gourd-ness this resource has so much more! Keep reading to find out more.
Halloween Comprehension Activity
Honestly, we will bring in comprehension practice any time we can. Halloween is no exception. If you teach PreK-2nd or work as a speech & language therapist, you’ll want to grab this comprehension activity.
Students will display their comprehension through writing and reading in this resource. One activity set has students listening to a Halloween story (6 different stories in all) and answering comprehension questions. One of these fa-boo-lous stories is called “The Witches Kitchen”, which will challenge their oral listening, comprehension, and vocabulary skills. This can easily turn into a Halloween writing activity. Win-win-win!
Following directions is a crucial comprehension skill- so of course it’s included! Students will color a variety of Halloween picture scenes by completing 1, 2 or 3 step-directions.
Your students will enjoy the Halloween themed stories and the hands-on listening activities – because who doesn’t love an opportunity to use crayons while learning! We guarantee you’ll use this Halloween activity for school year after year.
If you want all of these Halloween activities for school, then you’re in luck.
We’ve included each resource in a bundle. And you know what that means – discounts! 🧛
In this bundle, you’ll get the three different Halloween activities- the retell, sentence writing, and language activities. Get ready to create a complete Halloween thematic unit with these resources! Don’t let this deal slip trough those butterfingers!
We hope you enjoy these thematic Halloween activities! We know that reviewing the same old, same old content can get boring – but these activities will surely bring excitement to your classroom.
