Spooky season in middle and high school English class is always a whole vibe. Cozy cardigans, pumpkin spice lattes, and absolutely unhinged spooky stories that leave students speechless at 8 am on a Tuesday. (Anyone teaching something horrific this morning?!) I’m convinced English teachers have more fun, but especially in the fall!
If you’re ready to sprinkle in some spooky, seasonal fun while still slaying your standards this month, then I have a treat for you: a giant list of ideas, strategies, lessons, and resources!
These spooky ideas will help you trick your students into learning and weave in fall fun without sacrificing your curriculum! Grab your planner and your favorite fall bev, and let’s go, ghouls! 😉
SPOOKY BOOK TASTING
Set the scene with spooky music, battery-powered candles, and eerie ambient media, and let students sample creepy reads during a spooky book tasting. With a digital interactive menu, students can explore all the horror, paranormal, and spooky stories their hearts desire. It’s the perfect activity for a cozy fall day (or a last-minute sub plan for when the germs of DEVOLSON catch up to you).
100-WORD HORROR STORY
Make writing and revision less dreadful and more fun with a 100-word horror story mini-unit. The low word count forces students to cut the fluff and be intentional about everything: word choice, sentence structure, pacing, sensory details, and more. It teaches concise writing, illustrates the importance of precise language, strengthens understanding of narrative structure, and shows writers why sentence variety matters. Students truly learn MORE by writing less! To learn more about teaching 100-word stories, click HERE. You can find a complete 100-word horror story unit HERE or a generic 100-word story/memoir resource HERE.
FALL SPEED DEBATING
Sneak in speaking/listening, argument, and debate, but make it spooky, fun, and festive with fall-themed speed debating. This unique discussion strategy engages every student simultaneously. It works well paired with a unit on persuasion/argument or as a standalone seasonal lesson. During speed debating, students rotate through partners and a mix of silly and serious prompts like “Should pumpkin pie be considered a vegetable?” or “Should the voting age be lowered to 16?” It’s fast-paced, fun, and builds confidence in public speaking without the pressure of formal debate. You can check this lesson out HERE or learn more about this discussion strategy HERE.
CHARACTER FUNERAL & EULOGY
Trick your students into learning with a character eulogy & funeral paired with your favorite whole-class novel or short story! It’s a much more engaging way to explore point of view, theme, and author’s purpose! Students write and deliver passionate eulogies or elegies while you guide the class through literary analysis with a clever funeral program.
For example, I love to host a funeral for The Great Gatsby. Students write eulogies from Nick’s point of view to analyze his complex attitude toward Gatsby, his role as narrator, and ultimately, Fitzgerald’s purpose in writing the book. When I teach The Outsiders, we celebrate the life of Johnny by writing eulogies as Ponyboy or Dally, discussing his impact, and reading “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”
You can find a character eulogy/funeral lesson for any text HERE.
SCIENCE OF FEAR PODCAST
Spooky season is the perfect time to feature some fascinating nonfiction, like this Hidden Brain podcast about the science of fear! This podcast explores what triggers fear and what happens to our brain when we experience it. Help students focus during the podcast with creative visual notes that encourage coloring and doodling, and then host an engaging discussion after listening. This lesson pairs perfectly with any horror or suspense unit and sparks conversation about why humans love to be scared. You can check out everything you need to teach it HERE.
FREAKY FIRST CHAPTER FRIDAY
Dim the lights, grab a flashlight, and feature a frightening read every Friday in October! To make it even more fun, I created this spooky-themed freebie! To keep things fresh, I feature anything scary, creepy, or weird, not just spooky books: a healthy mix of horror, paranormal, survival, thriller, and dystopian is perfect! Here are a few of my favorite recs to feature during spooky season.
Middle School:
- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
- Spirit Hunters by Ellen Oh
- The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
- A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd
- The Trail by Meika Hashimoto
- Girl, Stolen by April Henry
High School:
- The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson
- The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
- The Hollow Inside by Brooke Lauren Davis
- Murder Trending by Gretchen McNeil
- This Is Our Story by Ashley Elston
- The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
You can learn more about First Chapter Friday HERE and check out graphic organizers for the rest of the year HERE.
BANNED BOOKS
There’s nothing scarier than censorship! Bring awareness to banned and challenged books during Banned Books Week (October 5–12), spooky season, or any dystopian unit with a book tasting full of banned and challenged titles. Students are always shocked to see many of their favorite books among the banned books, and they love the thrill of exploring even more titles. After all, nothing gets kids excited to read like telling them, “People don’t want you to read this!” 😜 This book tasting sparks important conversations about the threat of censorship, the right to read, and the power of literature. You can check out a print & digital Banned Books Tasting HERE or over a dozen other themed- and genre-based book tastings HERE.
EDGAR ALLAN POE QUESTION TRAIL
Need a lesson that gets your students out of their seats and moving around the room? This is it! Turn on some spooky music and challenge students to complete a kinesthetic question trail featuring literary devices and figurative language in Edgar Allan Poe’s classics. This fun activity pairs well with any of Poe’s stories or poems, but you can also use it as a standalone lesson to review literary devices. It features examples from “The Raven,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “Annabel Lee,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and more. (Students don’t need to have read all of these to complete it.)
You can check out my Poe question trail HERE, other question trails HERE, and create-your-own templates HERE. To learn more about creating your own question trails, click HERE.
SPOOKY MENTOR TEXTS & WRITING WORKSHOP
Help students study what makes writing engaging, suspenseful, and scary with mentor texts that feature high-interest excerpts from spooky young adult & middle grade books. Give students the spooky snippets and ask them, “What do you notice about the way this is written?” Students will notice craft moves like sensory details, vivid action verbs, foreshadowing, and more. But the best part is the magic that happens after: Students use the mentor texts as inspiration for their own spooky writing! You can find this high-engagement, no-prep resource HERE.
HORRIFYING HOOKS GALLERY WALK
If you’re tired of reading another narrative that starts with “Have you ever wondered…” then you need this spooky narrative hook lesson in your life. Show students how to write captivating narrative hooks that reel readers in with “Freaky First Lines” posters that feature creepy, weird, and horrifying hooks from spooky young adult and middle grade books. Get students moving on a gallery walk where they analyze the strongest hooks and learn about the different techniques writers use to reel readers in. It’s seasonal ELA decor that doubles as a lesson and gets students excited about reading! What’s not to love? You can find this engaging resource HERE.
MOCK TRIAL
Put your favorite characters from a class novel or short story on trial, evaluate their guilt, and determine their fate with a mock trial! This is another one of my favorite ways to trick my students into learning and review plot, motive, character development, and more. Students get so invested in defending their arguments that they forget to complain about annotating, citing evidence, and analyzing literature. A mock trial is a great alternative to traditional assessments, and it’s easy to get all your grading done during class while students are delivering their arguments. The best part is it works well with any story or novel that features a death, crime, or ethical dilemma (so basically anything, LOL). You can find my no-prep mock trial for any text resource HERE.
“EXAMINATION DAY” ESCAPE ROOM
I never hear English teachers talking about this short story” “Examination Day” by Henry Slesar. This is not Poe or your typical spooky story; it’s actually dystopian, not horror…so it’s even scarier! 😉 If you’ve never read this, go check it out right now. (It’s just 3 pages!) Once you read it, you’ll see exactly why kids love it. They freak out about the twist ending, and it prompts them to look back through the story for clues about the dystopian government. The story is fun to teach, but it’s important and relevant, too. It shows students that knowledge is power and why corrupt governments want to control, restrict, and censor (which means it’s perfect for both Banned Books Week and spooky season).
To make “Examination Day” even more memorable, I created an escape room centered around the “government exam” that frames the story. I even went one step further and pranked my students by telling them they’d have to take an official “exam.” The escape room was a blast, and most importantly, students remembered the story and its themes for the rest of the year. If you want to try this engaging print and digital escape room in your classroom, click HERE.
HORROR: PERSONALITY QUIZ BOOK BROCHURE
Scare your students into reading with a fun reader personality quiz in a horror book brochure. Students take a magazine-style personality quiz that asks them about their interests. Based on their answers, the brochure recommends a different high-interest horror book tailored to their preferences! It’s a super fun way to spark conversations about the horror genre and help students build their to-read lists. You can pair this with a spooky First Chapter Friday or Book Trailer Tuesday for even more engagement. (More on spooky trailers below!) You can find the middle school horror book brochure HERE and the high school version HERE.
SPOOKY BOOK TRAILER TUESDAY
Feature scary good books during spooky season with Book Trailer Tuesday! If you’ve never heard of this strategy, it’s simple: Every Tuesday, press play on a different book trailer to hook your students on reading. Spooky season is the perfect time to start, because the horror and paranormal trailers are especially creepy and fun! You can find middle school spooky season recs HERE and high school horror/paranormal book recs HERE.
To learn more about Book Trailer Tuesday, click HERE. For a freebie of book trailer links for the entire year, click HERE.
PSYCHOLOGY OF FEAR NONFICTION
Explore why humans love haunted houses, scary movies, true crime, and creepy stories with nonfiction that dissects the psychology of fear. This article (available with a free account) is a quick read that introduces students to the science of fear: how it can boost our mood and even provide learning opportunities. Students love the chance to discuss their favorite scary movies and moments, reflect on their love for fear, and debate humanity’s obsession with horror. This lesson sparks powerful discussions and pairs perfectly with any unit that focuses on horror, fear, gothic fiction, spooky stories, true crime, etc. It also works well as a last-minute sub plan during spooky season. You can check out this resource HERE.
DISNEY MOVIES AS HORROR FILMS
Shock your students with recut movie trailers. These creative remakes are perfect for teaching mood and tone. If you haven’t seen movie trailer remakes on YouTube, check them out ASAP! These are perfect for spooky season and Halloween because people have transformed films like “Frozen” and “Mary Poppins” into horror movies. On the flip side, others have taken horror movies like “The Shining” and flipped them into rom-coms. By showing the original trailers and the remakes, students will able to analyze what makes scary movies so scary! This activity helps students build the skill of close reading, but through a different medium. Instead of analyzing author’s choices, students are analyzing director’s choices. This is especially helpful for my visual learners, who can more easily identify and dissect the choices they see on a screen. You can find a lesson template with links to trailers HERE.
WRITE HORROR STORIES
Students can’t get enough of scary stories, so why not challenge them to write their own spine-chilling tales? The thrill of writing something weird, creepy, gruesome, murder-y, or supernatural is enough to engage even the most reluctant of writers, and a spooky story writing unit is a great way for students to apply narrative writing skills. Horror stories demand suspenseful pacing, tension, and show-don’t-tell writing to evoke fear, which means students will be practicing all the narrative techniques you’ve taught and applying them to a new genre. They’re great practice, but perhaps the best part is sharing the stories on a crisp October day. Grab a flashlight, dim the lights, find a spooky ambient scene on YouTube, and gather the students ‘round for a read-aloud (and get your grading done as students read their stories aloud)! It’s the next-best thing to listening to ghost stories while roasting s’mores around a bonfire.
You can find a super helpful “How to Write a Spooky Story” reference brochure HERE and use resources like the Freaky First Lines gallery walk, spooky mentor texts, and revision stations (more on those below) to frame your unit.
SPOOKY STORY REVISION STATIONS
It might be spooky season, but revision doesn’t have to be scary! Make revision less dreadful and more approachable with revision stations that focus on one element at a time: sensory details, action verbs, pacing, structure, and peer feedback. These stations scaffold the process of revision so it feels manageable and concrete, instead of overwhelming and elusive. You can check out these spooky story revision stations HERE and revision stations for any narrative HERE.
BOOK “INVESTIGATION”
Turn your classroom into a crime scene with a “book investigation” where students explore mysteries and thrillers (a fun twist on a book tasting). Students act like detectives, searching for clues in plot summaries, covers, and excerpts to determine the suspects they want to add to their to-read lists. This book investigation activity is complete with print and digital versions, editable book menus, 60+ book recs, and 2 versions: one for middle school and one for high school. You can find it HERE.
“THE TELL-TALE HEART” BUT BETTER
Teach “The Tell-Tale Heart” (you know you want to), but bring new life into this creepy classic with a dramatic a dramatic reading. Then, debate the sanity of the narrator, evaluate the ending, rate the reliability of the narrator, analyze Poe’s choices, and more with an engaging set of learning stations. Then, wrap it up by analyzing and comparing a short film adaptation. Even if your students have read “Tell-Tale” before, these activities will challenge them to go deeper and analyze Poe’s writing, word by word.
“DEAD WORDS” LESSON
Put overused, cliché, and weak words to rest. Host a “Dead Words” funeral where students mourn weak words and vow to remove them from their writing forevermore! Students design tombstones and/or write eulogies and brainstorm stronger, more vivid replacements. After, students can write sentences, short stories, or poems with their new words. It’s silly, memorable, and perfect for a spooky writing day. You can pair this fun lesson with the 100-word horror story mini-unit or any spooky story.
COZY, CREEPY FALL READING DAY
Have a day to spare during October? Maybe a Friday before fall break, the day after conferences, or a day in between units? Host a cozy-meets-creepy fall reading day! Dim the lights, crack the windows to let the crisp air in, press play on some cozy or spooky ambient media (like this “gothic reading nook”), and let students get lost in their books. You can either join the students while they read, knock out reading conferences, or get some grading done if you’re really behind. You and your students deserve a day to chill, cozy up, and read!
SPOOKY SEASON WRITING PRACTICE
Spark critical thinking about horror, fear, and the dark side of humanity this October with bell-ringers or “quickwrites” about horror, fear, true crime, and all things spooky season. Ask students about their greatest fears, what makes a story/movie truly scary, the ethics of “dark tourism,” and more. These engaging prompts get students critically, making connections, and reflecting on why humans like scary, dark, and morbid stuff. Pair these with any gothic fiction or spooky story unit, or just use them as standalone writing practice. You can find this collection of engaging writing prompts HERE.
“MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH” ESCAPE ROOM
Bring Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” to life with an epic escape room. This isn’t any escape room; it’s an elaborate, engaging creation that’s just the right amount of challenging. True to the story, this activity features 7 different rooms, or challenges, students must get complete. Each challenge gets more difficult as students explore literary devices, allegory, theme, and more. It’s so much fun, especially the final “challenge” (IYKYK). This escape room comes with a print, digital, and hybrid version, so you can make it work for you and your students. You can find it HERE, but beware: Students will beg for more!
TEACH DYSTOPIA
Teach the most disturbing tales of all time: dystopian lit! Introduce the genre to your students with dystopian intro stations, a “What Do You Notice?” activity, or a dystopian gallery walk. These resources pair perfectly with any dystopian short story unit, whole-class novel, or book clubs/literature circle. You can learn more about teaching dystopia HERE and read about my favorite activities HERE.
October is the perfect time to make learning feel a little more magical (and a lot more memorable). Whether you go all-in on horror or just add a dash of fall fun, these lessons will help you engage your students while still teaching the skills that matter most. Click HERE to browse all of my spooky season resources. For a mega bundle of my spooky favorites at a scary-good, limited-time deal, click HERE.
