Top Ten Instructional Resources for the Scariest Week of the School Year

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From Amontillado to Zombie, the Digital Library has you covered A-Z

A round up of creepy, scary, monster-filled Smarter Balanced Digital Library Instructional Resources perfect for classroom use during Halloween week.

1. “Monster” Capitalization Rules (ELA, Grade 3)
   This lesson has students sort all of the capitalization rules into categories, create examples for the rules, and do an application activity.
2. Exploring Rigid Motion Transformations with Zombies (Math, Grade 8)
   Students explore rigid transformations in the coordinate plane by investigating reflections, rotations and translations.
3. Messy Monster Math: Whole Number Operations (Math, Grade 1)
   This lesson allows students to use higher level thinking skills and this is not a paper pencil activity. Students are engaged and hands on when learning.
4. Tales Mummies Tell: Classifying Information and Finding Textual Evidence (ELA, Grade 6)
   This instructional resource provides an opportunity for students to classify terms related to Ancient Egyptian mummies, to create declarative statements with the terms that predict what they will read, and study informational text to find evidence that supports or refutes the statements they have written.
5. Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” (ELA, Grade 8)
   The Edgar Allan Poe masterpiece “The Tell-Tale Heart” serves as the unit plan’s anchor text. A powerful array of additional texts offer contrasting views regarding the fine line that sometimes exists between fact and fiction.
6. Pumpkin Sorting: How Many Ways Can you Find? (Math, Grade K-1)
   This resource has students exploring different ways to box 10 pumpkins, some that are white and some that are traditional orange.
7. Abracadabra! Casting Magic Spells for Spelling Patterns and Spelling Rules (ELA, Grade 5)
   Identify, find, and spell examples of 5th grade words! Do your students struggle with spelling? Research says that everyone can learn to spell by knowing the spelling RULES and PATTERNS. There are three major spelling approaches: phonemic, whole-word, and morphemic.
8. Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” (ELA, Grade 9-11)
   Students read an excerpt of Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and then respond to a task by using text evidence to support an inference about the characters’ relationship.
9. “Punkin Chunkin” Quadratic Equations and Projectile Motion (Math, Grade 8-12)
   Students are given three sets of team data in the form of a graph, an equation, and a table. They must compare teams’ height of pumpkin trajectory, distance of discharge, and tallest catapult a pumpkin was launched from.
10. Interpreting Remainders: Sophie’s Candy Shop (Math, Grade 4)
    Trick or Treat! This activity engages students in reasoning through contextual division problems that require interpreting a remainder and justify their interpretation.