Students love Halloween, so why not harness that excitement by using Halloween themes to teach in October. I created a set of easy to read Halloween poems for sight words to teach and review sight words all month long. These poems also help students work on their reading fluency! I can target many skills at once, and they totally buy-in because of the Halloween theme.
This post is part of a series organized by Rachael from the Classroom Game Nook Blog. I am joining many other talented teachers for this blog hop full of Teaching Tricks! What more could you ask for?
My trick is to use Poetry to introduce sight words. It is an excellent way for students to see the sight words in context, and the content is short and sweet. I keep the poems quick and easy to read so that they are ideally suited to beginning readers in first grade. You can use the poems to work on reading fluency and visualizing as well, so you get more bang for your curriculum buck!
In the weeks leading up to Halloween, I use this set of sight word poems. We use them on the Smartboard and in the pocket chart to get in lots of review.
Have students circle the sight words in the poem - the ones you are introducing and ones that are already on your word wall. The Black Cat poem is available in my Free Halloween Poetry Sample Pack. You can find it {HERE}

Turn the poem into a cloze activity and have your students figure out the missing sight word to make the poem make sense.
Use this worksheet and the others included to review so many skills:
- reading the poem
- finding the sight words in context
- visualizing and drawing a picture that matches the poem
- comprehension - each poem has an "in the text" comprehension question to answer.
Halloween Poems and Activities for Sight Words
Take a moment to Pin the post so you can refer to it again next year.
Now please head over to the next blog to pick up more tricks!
Until next time,
I love Ellie! What a great idea.
ReplyDeleteThank you. She is well loved by my students! Thanks for stopping by. Christina
DeleteI love the crate stools!
ReplyDeleteThanks! My students LOVE being the stool star for the day. It is a coveted spot in the classroom for sure. Thank you for stopping by. Christina
DeleteAhh I love the sound of Ellie the Elephant!
ReplyDeleteTeaching Autism