The Disucator: Creepy Creeps with Eerie Eyes- A Descriptive Writing Lesson

Do your students need to practice writing descriptively? Why not use the holiday to your advantage? Follow this fun lesson plan to have the children talk about their own Haunted Mansion.

Subject: Language Arts
Grade: Can be adapted from Kindergarten through 5th Grade
Estimated Time: 40 to 50 Minutes

Learning Objectives:
At the end of this lesson, students will be able to

• learn describing words
• be able to describe a haunted house
• write a paragraph about haunted houses

Materials:

• Haunted Mansion book and audio (can be found at http://www.mousevinyl.com/content/haunted-mansion-disneyland-records)
  
• Access to a computer and projector (if this is not available, the children can take turns watching it on the computer or the teacher can just read it out loud to them without showing them the pictures)

Procedure

1. Ask the students what they think a haunted house looks like. Ask them what a haunted house has in it and what makes it a haunted house.
2. Write the descriptive and key words the children say on the board
3. Show them the Haunted Mansion book
   
4. Have the children write for 15 to 20 minutes about a haunted house they visited or a haunted house they would make. Make sure they use some descriptive words that are on the board and were in the Haunted Mansion story. (For the younger grades, you can have them draw a picture of their haunted house instead of writing about it and the writing samples can be from a couple sentences to a paragraph or story. Allow the children to be creative, let the ones writing even draw a picture of their haunted mansion if there is time for them to do so.)
5. When they are done, allow the children time to share their writing/picture with the other students

This is a fun activity to work on children's writing skills and descriptive thinking, plus it gets them in the holiday spirit! Feel free to use the descriptive words that are given in other fun holiday ways, including a word search, crossword or even a Halloween themed Hangman game!

Thank you to www.mousevinyl.com for the awesome Haunted Mansion book and audio used in this lesson.

Check out www.teach-nology.com/web_tools for an excellent Word Search maker among other great teacher tools.

Until our next lesson, class dismissed! (And a Happy Halloween!)