Literary Halloween

Today, we took a break from the curriculum. Instead, I dressed up as Hermione Granger, and I told the students that if they called me a Mudblood, they'd get detention. I had them write Halloween journals that could be about school dances, parties, costumes, trick or treating, tricks, treats, candy, bobbing for apples, jack-o-lanterns, haunted houses, haunted restaurants, haunted schools, cemeteries, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, vampires, vampire bats, psychos, physcho mermaids, trolls, penguins, garden gnomes...And then I read them Edgar Alan Poe's Masque of the Red Death while they quietly doodled and colored (a tactic that hopefully helps them relax into the story).

I love having my kids write journals. I see them playing around with form and content; being creative; and writing! It helps me track their writing improvements as well. I'm thinking about having contests and awarding the student who writes the most; maybe I'll buy some cheap, cool prizes at the Dollar General. I know it promotes competition, blah, blah, blah, but I want to encourage them to do even more, even better. Some of them write close to 200 words when 100 is an A+.