This Lesson's Title:

Hoot & Howl...

...your way into
Halloween poetry

This poetry lesson was created by
NNWP Teacher Consultant Karen McGee. Many of Karen's lessons can be found in the NNWP's Six by Six Guide for Primary Teachers.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Halloween Hoots and Howls by Joan Horton. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.

Check out Halloween Hoots and Howls at Amazon.com.

Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

Joan Horton’s book of Halloween poems inspires students to try their hands at writing spooky poems. When students build a large enough word bank, they feel more empowered to attempt the dense, compacted writing of poetry. The word bank serves two important purposes: supplying needed vocabulary and acting as a content word wall for spelling purposes. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is word choice; the writer’s goal is to select a group of words from the Halloween word bank to then build a Halloween poem of his own. The support trait is conventions; because the word bank acts as a Content Word Wall, the student will spell all of the selected words correctly. If this word wall is used in conjunction with a High Frequency Word Wall, the student will write a poem which is almost perfectly correct in spelling.