Build vocabulary and get in the Halloween sprit with a collection of festive activities! Here, scholars take part in a holiday celebration, unearth the unknown in mystery feel-boxes, and create monster masks out of paper plates. 

Reading scary stories on Halloween is frightfully good fun! As elementary learners read several stories for the holiday, they choose a favorite and create a decorative garland representing the characters and setting elements found...

Students discover facts about the Mexican holiday, Day of the Dead. In this compare and contrast lesson, students explore Halloween and the Day of the Dead. Students create an alter to memorialize a family member or friend that has...

A lesson examines the holidays, Día de los Muertos and Halloween. After an exciting clip from the movie Coco, class members review vocabulary and discuss what they know about Halloween. The conversation leads into the history of Día...

How do different communities celebrate special occasions? After researching celebrations in their countries, class members investigate other festivals like those associated with Ramadan, Diwali, Chinese New Year, Halloween, Easter,...

Students study the customs and superstitions of the Halloween holiday. They look at the origin of the Halloween, read poems, play games, and discuss readings such as Harry Potter and the works of Stephen King.

Help scholars understand the history, geography, traditions, and art of Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Find background information for your reference as well as a detailed cross-curricular lesson plan. Learners compare...

Gear up for Halloween by studying the horror genre with your class and analyzing films and texts to uncover the genre's traditional conventions.

Connect poetry to a naturally kid-friendly topic: ghosts! Draw on your class's prior knowledge of the paranormal to help them access the classic poem "Haunted House" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. After a fun warm-up activity describing...

Explore Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in this literature analysis instructional activity. Middle schoolers read and summarize the plot of the story. They then adapt passages for a contemporary audience and analyze the...

From seed to jack-o-lantern, young scholars walk step-by-step through the life cycle of pumpkins with this fun art and science activity. After first participating in a shared reading of the children's book Pumpkin,...

Questioning a text is a very effective way for kids to develop their reading comprehension skills. Designed to engage all class members, a reading activity prompts pairs to develop and share their own questions about the ending of Neil...

What are the origins of el Dia de los Muertos, and how is this tradition observed in contemporary celebrations? With a variety of lesson plans and suggested hands-on activities, here is an excellent resource to reference as you...

What do all those chairs and pencils do in the classroom once everyone leaves? Allow imaginations to run wild with frighteningly short poems!

What skills do storytellers employ to bring to life the characters and events in their tales? After listening to a recording of a Haitian folk tale, class members consider how tone of voice, pace, and gestures can be used to enliven a...

W. W. Jacobs' horror story, "The Monkey's Paw," is used to introduce foreshadowing. As they advance through the story, young readers make predictions about what might happen next and how the story might end. Pairs work through the...

Fangs, capes, pale skin, and beady eyes! High schoolers investigate the tropes associated with vampires by examining excerpts from stories and films. They then create a timeline that reveals how the depictions of vampires have evolved...

Once conceived, a guided set of literary analysis lessons will assist you day and night. Ninth graders look closely at "The Tell-Tale Heart" and analyze how Poe uses point of view to create questions about the narrator's sanity and...

Here’s a cross-curricular program music activity that uses Peer Gynt to engage class members. Groups take one section of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” choreograph their section of the tune to represent the story as they imagine it,...

Students answer assigned questions as a group, write individual essays, complete a research project, and complete a writing project.

The Magic Pot by Patricia Coombs is the theme of this multidisciplinary lesson plan. Early readers first take part in a read aloud and grand conversation about the story's details. Then, they get to work practicing their skills in...

Accompany a novel study of Hatchet by Gary Paulson with a unit consisting of 16 lessons focused on physical and emotional survival. Reading the story along with a variety of informational texts, scholars compare and contrast reading...

Expose young children to the wonderful works of author and illustrator Jan Brett using a few of her stories such as Armadillo Rodeo, The Mitten, or Daisy Comes Home through a unit study. 

Great literature discussions are a consequence of carefully crafted questions, interpretative questions that permit more than one response, and responses supported by specific evidence from the text. The discussion questions in a guide...