I'll be perfectly honest, I was never a fan of Halloween. However, as I teacher, I capitalize on the idea of Halloween as much as I can and use it as an opportunity to spice up my instruction and pique students' interest. One of my primary vehicles is through literature, and I shared some of my favorite books, both funny and spooky, in a previous post. I also include poetry as well, and during the month of October Room 17 had fun memorizing and reciting the traditional "In A Dark, Dark Wood" and "I'm Not Scared!" by Karen Baiker. Practicing these poems develops fluency in reading and confidence in speaking in front of an audience. Something wonderful happened a couple weekends ago when I happily rediscovered some material from my old lesson plan files. It was a copy of an excerpt from Shakespeare's Macbeth, the witches' chant "Double, double, toil and trouble." I used to give this to fourth graders to memorize, and I thought, why not try it with my 2nd graders? I gave a very brief and general summary of the Macbeth story, and concluded by sharing film composer John Williams' rendition of "Double, double, toil and trouble" from the movie "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." You can listen to this catchy and delightfully wicked song here: We later used this goodie from Shakespeare as inspiration for writing our own recipes for magic potions. Besides this piece of music, I draw on other music that has long been associated with Halloween, including "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saëns and "Toccata and Fugue in d" by Johan Sebastian Bach. "Danse Macabre" was a particular favorite this year, and we had a devilishly good time doing some impromptu writing while listening to it. We even got to dance to it, thanks to our wonderful dance instructor, Ms. Devon Wall, who taught us how to freeze into all sorts of marvelous shapes with our bodies based on a broom, a trick-or-treat bag, a witch's hat, and a jack-o-lantern. Of course, there must be visual art in the mix. Students used chalk pastels to make spider web drawings and the following week, pumpkin patch landscapes with oil pastel: We wrapped up our Halloween funfest by making origami ghosts. They were deemed "simple" on the YouTube video where I learned it, but was quite a bit more complicated for my 2nd graders. Even so, they still found it engaging and, despite a bit of frustration, seemed determined to get all the steps down. Thankfully, I had two parent volunteers who were able to help the children with the trickier folds. The bubbling excitement from the students from all these activities is quite contagious. It almost made me like Halloween . . . almost!
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