October is a great month of the school year. You’ve settled into some school routines, gotten to know your students… and then Halloween comes and the kids go nuts! Why not capitalize on all that energy with some engaging Halloween reading activities? Below, I’ll share some of my favorite October ELA activities for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders.
Halloween Reading Comprehension Activities
I love using Halloween-themed passages to practice fiction and nonfiction reading skills. It’s a great way to keep students focused on learning during this crazy time! My Halloween Reading Passages pack includes fiction, nonfiction, functional text, and poetry, along with corresponding standards-based questions.
Halloween Word Analysis Practice
If you’ve read my blog post on teaching word analysis every day, you know I’m a fan of hitting vocabulary skills hard all year long. Halloween is a great time to weave in some practice with word analysis strategies! I love these high-interest word analysis worksheets for a warmup, center, or early finisher activity.
Halloween Read-Alouds
What better time of the year to use interactive read-alouds to review setting, characters, figurative language, inferring, predicting, and sensory details? Below are a few of my favorite Halloween books to read to upper elementary students.
- The Widow’s Broom by Chris Van Allsburg
- Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds
- Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
- Scary Stories for a Fright in the Night by S. L. Claytor
- The Witches by Roald Dahl
- Ghosts of Belle Isle (and other books in the Virginia Mysteries series) by Steven K. Smith
- Haunted [poem] by Shel Silverstein
An author’s choice of language and use of sensory words is particularly fun to teach with Halloween books! Grab a free graphic organizer for students to use with an interactive read-aloud or independent reading books!
Halloween Fluency Practice
Plenty of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders need fluency practice. I love these free Halloween fluency practice passages. Another fun option is to have students create their own spooky sentences to practice reading aloud in different voices!
I hope this post gives you some easy-to-implement ideas for incorporating fun Halloween activities into your reading lessons this October!
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