By Blake Mellencamp
As the end of October quickly draws near, the ICTE Executive Board wants to share some of their favorite spooky season teaching activities! In this post, you'll see some of our favorite kid-friendly horror stories and engaging classroom projects to use during Halloween time.
“My favorite kid-friendly horror story to bring out around Halloween is “Click-Clack the Rattle Bag” by Neil Gaiman. As much as some kids might play it off, middle school (and even high school) is not too old for a good story time. The students’ eyes always light up when I’m going to read to them, even at this age - so we turn on some lamps, gather in the front of the classroom, and usually I’ll even use my projector to simulate a nice fireplace for maximum ambience. As we move through each suspense laden step of the tale, kids will engage with the writing: they’ll make predictions about what’s to come, they’ll ask questions about what’s going on, and most importantly, they’ll squirm at just how creepy Gaiman’s writing is. As much as it’s our role as English teachers to focus on high-order skills of literary analysis, we can’t forget that those strategies are founded on something much more simple: a love of story. By sharing entertaining stories, we can get kids invested in literature, and hopefully, spark a curiosity for understanding them on a deeper level." - Blake Mellencamp, Middle School Chair
“My go to piece of literature for Halloween is no other than Shakespeare's “The Tragedy of Macbeth!” The three witches literally brew up trouble for Macbeth and ultimately Scotland, making it the perfect tale for the season. The witches' rhyming couplets are in trochaic tetrameter, which gives their words a spell-like cadence. I share how rapper Tupac Shakur was so inspired by “Macbeth” that he referenced the famous trio of witches in one of his songs entitled, “Something Wicked,” an allusion to a verse spoken by witch #2. It’s a fascinating connection between literature and music, and amazing how art can inspire and influence across different mediums. Then I like to challenge my students to create their own rhyming potions using the same
scheme." - Nikia Garland, President-Elect
“Nudging the envelope a little to include elementary teachers here too-- My favorite fall-themed book to use in the primary grades is Mousekin's Golden House by Edna Miller. The story lends itself to cross-curricular connections, such as predator-prey relationships in nature, seasons, and needs versus wants. I used this book in kindergarten and then we would design a class pumpkin house for Mousekin (which I carved). The actual pumpkin carving gave us so many sensory details to talk and write about, from the pumpkin smell to the ooey-gooey texture as the children helped scoop out the seeds. We counted seeds and then I roasted them for us to enjoy as a snack when we shared our fall poems and stories. The book is out of print, but it's worth requesting through interlibrary loan.”
- Katherine Higgs-Coulthard, Former President
“My favorite scary story right now is “Autopilot” written by Kevin Thomas and read by David Cummings on The No Sleep Podcast (S2E25). I think it might be too intense for younger students, but I thought I’d share the recommendation for your own listening/reading pleasure!
Something more mild to include in the newsletter would be a (pretty popular) short story called “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst. I like the idea of using this story during October perhaps in a unit that examines the themes of pride and love, as well as the elements of craft that might qualify something as horror. It is not your typical guts and gore of a horror piece, but it is quite psychologically twisting, which I think is a meaningful and less-likely-to-be-censored approach to get students thinking about what it means to fall into a genre (or not)." - Arden Woodall, College Liaison
Have fun celebrating this season with your students and Happy Halloween from ICTE!