Lily Jones confesses to be a Halloween Grinch in her
latest blog
post, but there are plenty of creative teachers devising ways to mix the
fun of the holiday in their witches’ cauldron.
The last #njed
twitter discussion had my tweeps coming up with applications for every
grade level and subject area.
Ideas
from the pumpkin patch
@principalarc had kids decorate pumpkins based on
lit characters. Here are some guidelines
for that activity.
@mrnesi remembers predicting the volume of a pumpkin
– other suggestions include counting ridges, seeds, graphing, averaging, and estimating with
pumpkin seeds.
Or the candy store
Although some would rather not ruin their
festivities with negative aspects of candy, you can do a lot of math with a bag
of it: count and graph, weigh for
accuracy, look at nutritional information, calculate the calories in your trick
or treat bag.
Or costumes
from the old trunk upstairs
@wwpscience Theme it for the class. If reading a book with the class, costumes of
characters. I gave credit for dressing up as scientists.
Dress as literary
characters, scientists, historical figures, etc.
Or
the science lab
Great experiements @dandanscience offers spooky science experiments
@mrnesi – feely bags- record
notes, make predictions.
Did I miss your subject area?
Of course, Jerry Blumengarten, better known as @Cybraryman1
has got you covered with his wonderful collection of links and resources for
every aspect of Halloween.
There are tons of potential
writing prompts for Halloween, but what about the critical thinking
component? Are you hitting the common
core?
Ratchet
up their thinking
Let’s circle back to our self-proclaimed Grinch,
what if your town was carefully considering cancelling Halloween? This is the premise of the free SCAN lesson, “Should
We Cancel Halloween?” The scenario
starts:
Due
to some recent vandalism in your town, the town council is discussing canceling
trick or treating this year. You have
been invited to the town meeting to decide what action should be taken. After listening to the concerns of parents,
students, police and council members you will help develop a plan of action for
Halloween night.
Of course, using the SCAN tool, students would take
on the roles of those in the meeting, visit web resources to gather evidence to
support their point of view and discuss and clarify the issues online. From this collaboration, they would decide
what should be done. Throw in a little
civics with a discussion around whether the government has the right to cancel
a holiday! A little critical thinking,
a little creativity and a little common core all swirled together in a witches
brew!
To access this lesson and learn more about the SCAN online
discussion tool, check out this short video.
