Are you looking for Halloween writing prompts to use with your students around this holiday? I’ve got you covered! I love talking about Halloween – we don’t really celebrate it (yet) in the Netherlands – and it’s great fun for my students to learn about the holiday. Before we do anything, we have a short discussion about what Halloween is actually about, which you can do too, if you download these discussion cards for free!
Then I love getting my students to write, and writing stories is my favorite. Around Halloween my students love to write scary stories about monsters and graveyards or other creepy things, and I thoroughly enjoy reading their work. Let me tell you how I try to spark their creativity and imagination with Halloween writing prompts, and how I get super engaged students from this!
Happy Halloween writing
With my older kids I will sometimes do narrative writing as well, but they’re not always in the mood to do ‘fun’ things. Occasionally of course, they love it, and they forget they’re so cool, and they enjoy writing stories. Most of the time, though, we do non-fiction writing, and that’s what I have my discussion cards for. Using these, they will write essay style pieces about the holiday.
Halloween narrative writing
But of course, story writing is much more fun! I love it when kids get creative. That’s why I will ask most of my students (about 150 of them) to write a scary story for Halloween.
How to write a Halloween story
In order to write a Halloween story, you need a few things. You need the main character or characters. This could be a scared boy or girl but a monster could also play the lead. Then you need a setting. I love cemeteries, haunted houses, morgues, or ghost towns. Usually it rains or there’s fog. Next, you need an object. A weapon is the obvious choice, but students will be challenged if you make them write about a spoon, an armchair, or a closet. Last, you could give them a starting sentence that entices them, like “Watch out, it’s coming!” or “Let me go!”.
Students don’t need much more than this to just go off and write an amazingly suspenseful story. And it’s such an easy task to create. It will certainly get them in the spirit of Halloween.
Halloween writing prompts for middle school
I’ve come up with three super fun ways of giving my students Halloween writing prompts. You can have students choose between options, or you could choose one that you like best for the whole class. I love them all, and luckily, I teach 5 different grade levels, so I can use them all this year!
Writing prompt Halloween style: Roll the Dice writing prompts
I give students a sheet with 4 categories and 6 possible prompts per category. The categories are: character, location, object, and exclamation. They have to roll the dice (1-6) four times to see what prompts they roll. Then they must write or tell a story out loud using these prompts! This option helps students choose between prompts, and it gives them clear perimeters from which to start their story. To find the sheet that I give my students, go here!
Story starters for Halloween: Halloween Storytelling Cards
Small groups get 4 categories of picture cards to choose blindly from. The categories are: monster, location, extra character, and object. When they have chosen their cards, they must write a story or tell it out loud! This option gives students the choice of which prompts to use for their story. They may not have an idea yet what to write about, or they might do, but these pictures will spark their creativity. Check out the cards I use here!
Fun Halloween story: Spooky Storytelling Pictures
Students must write a story using the image prompts. There are 6 images that could be used individually (tell the story of 1 picture), or all together (tell the story using all the pictures in it). Students must tell the spooky story of what happened.. Picture prompts are great for prompting thoughts for a story. It’s very visual and works really well for my students to come up with things to write about. Go take a look at the pictures I use, here!
No fiction please
Don’t want to have students write stories? Get students to talk about Halloween: How would they dress up? What is their favorite candy? What monster do they find scariest? Get them talking! Check out my free set of discussion cards here.
Yes fiction please
Or DO you want students to do narrative writing? I’ve got the aforementioned sets of writing prompts available as separative resources in my story, but I’ve also made a bundle out of all of them! This bundle is also available in my store, and you can find it by clicking here. How do you spell happy Halloween? With fun writing prompts!
Whatever you choose to do for Halloween with your students, enjoy it! It’s such a fun holiday to celebrate with them!
Check out other articles I wrote about writing with your students, here!
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