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? Here are some of my favorite activities for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders that are perfect to use all October long.
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.
These are great to use during reading workshop and especially with small groups!
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
There are TONS of great books you can use to review setting, characters, plot, making predictions, drawing conclusions, sensory details, figurative language, and more!
Here are a few of my favorite Halloween books for upper elementary students:
- The Widow’s Broom by Chris Van Allsburg
- Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds
- She Made a Monster: How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein by Lynn Fulton
- 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
Analyzing an author’s choice of language and identifying sensory words are especially fun to teach with Halloween books!
Grab the free graphic organizer above for students to use with a read-aloud or as they read independently!
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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