Although October is arguably one of the most stressful months of the school year, these 4 Middle School Halloween Reading Comprehension Lessons that I use with my students are some of their (and my) favorite of all! I teach a lot of siblings, and they ask every year if we’re going to do the “spooky lessons.”
1. “The Lift” Lesson Plan
One of my students favorites is using Patrick Carman’s 3:15 series. What 3:15 stands for are the 3 elements that make up these stories: listen/watch the introduction, read, and then watch the conclusion. The 15 is because you’re supposed to be able to do all this in 15 minutes. For the complete lesson plan, click here.
2. Halloween Digital Escape Room
Another spooky ELA lesson is this digital escape where students are trapped in the original Halloween celebration that took place over 2000 years ago. To “breakout” and return for the current Halloween festivities, they must escape 4 “rooms.” Room #1 requires students to read an informational text on the History of Halloween. Next they will work with Halloween figurative language and will complete a jigsaw puzzle that requires them to determine the figurative language used in the puzzle. Then students will read a modified version of “The Monkey’s Paw” where they answer critical thinking questions, and finally they will watch a short Edpuzzle video (NO LOGIN REQUIRED) and answer questions that will provide the final code. See a sneak peek below:
3. Halloween Reading Comprehension Digital Escape Room with Suggestions for Using Printable Format
I recently created another Halloween escape room that focused on important ELA skills. Students will read the short story, “The Elevator,” and will use critical thinking to answer questions related to main idea, author’s purpose, conflict, context clues, and more. They will work through 4 different activities in order to breakout of the elevator. This is a great way to have students practice using important standards while also having a blast completing the multiple of Halloween ELA activities. You also save 20% by purchasing the bundle of Halloween ELA Digital Escape Rooms at the link above. Here’s a video that shows how it works.
4. Spooky ELA Lessons from Commonlit.org
Commonlit is one of my go-to platforms because it’s FREE, and it has thousands of leveled texts from any genre. This Halloween collection includes anything from “The Tell-Tale Heart” & “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe to “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving… and that’s only a couple of MANY stories that are fitting for this season. Each story comes with guided questions, a quiz, and paired media that connects to the story. If you aren’t familiar with Commonlit, I explain in more detail in this blog post.
You can also save 50% by purchasing this Halloween Reading Comprehension Bundle! Also, as a thank you for stopping by, here’s a little Halloween related subject and predicate worksheet. It includes 3 levels of differentiation, and my students tend to get a kick out of it. I hope you enjoy this as well as the other Halloween Reading Comprehension lessons I’ve shared. Feel free to message me or leave a comment with any questions.
