A Haunted House Story

Task: Write a story set in a haunted house


Goals: 
1. Vivid description of the setting, using sensory details, in story. Develop a vocabulary for describing sounds.
2. Writing a story with a plot that shows a problem and a solution.
3. Nurturing a joy for creative writing.

This writing activity needs to be done over 4 – 5 days. Use your judgement about combining steps into a single lesson.

1. Set the mood …

 I started this task by taking the students on a virtual tour of a haunted house. I found a decent website by doing a Google search. As we entered the house and explored the various spooky rooms the desire to create a story shone in the faces of my students!

2. Make the setting come alive …

I played a Halloween soundtrack. The kids were instructed to listen and jot down all the sounds they could hear. After about five minutes of the soundtrack I asked them to share what they heard. I listed their responses on chart paper. Whenever they gave a vague response such as “I could hear an owl”, I would say, “How did you know it was an owl? What sound did it make?” They soon got the idea. We came up with an impressive list: cackling, screeching, rattling, groans, moans, howls, screaming, hooting, growling, yelps, creaking, evil laughter.

3. Get the picture …

 I handed a picture of a haunted house and some writing paper to each of the kids.
Look at the picture. What can you see? What would you be able to smell? What would you hear? What would you feel on your skin? 

I asked the kids to divide their writing paper into four squares. In each square they wrote down the following headings: Sights, Smells, Sounds, Feel. They then filled each square with as many sensory details as they could come with from examining the picture.

4. The first draft …

Think about a story set in that haunted house. Who would your main character/s be? You could put yourself in the story and write it in first person. What would the problem be? How would it be solved? 
Now write your story. 

I didn’t give too much guidance with plot development. They were already quite excited about the task. I wanted them to just let out their creativity. The one thing I emphasized is that the story should have no violence or blood and to remember our “banned” words which are displayed on a chart made visible during our writing sessions. My students understand very well by now that they are not allowed to use these words: nice, good, bad, stuff, things, cool, great.

5. The Setting – described in a powerful paragraph …

 This lesson was devoted to writing a stellar paragraph describing the setting. I asked the kids to get out the paper with the four squares and look at what they wrote. On a separate paper they had to select from their list what would fit into their story. They had to write sentences to describe the setting, being sure not to start with “I saw … “; “I heard … “; etc. After they wrote their paragraph, I told them that this could be the first paragraph in their story, or if that didn’t work, they had to decide where it would fit. Because my students are third graders I felt a little unsure about this. Did they get what I was asking of them? To my delight, they were fine. They knew exactly what I was asking them to do.

6. Finish the story. The kids returned to their stories, plugged in the setting, and figured out ways to resolve the problem they had thought about. They had to proofread for spelling and punctuation.

7. Editing and Revising

This step applies to all writing tasks. Each student comes to me with their story and I help them fix their mistakes. I show them how to make their sentences short and succinct. We delete “so” and “then”, and clean up awkward words and phrases. Because I am a writer I can do this quite quickly. I realize that this phase of the task could be difficult to manage. This is a good time to solicit the help of a parent volunteer.

8. Final Draft

The stories are rewritten and the haunted house pictures are colored.

Below are excerpts of student stories showing their setting descriptions.


When they got to the haunted house they saw that it was as large as a school. It was musty and you could smell it a mile away. When it became dark they went in. It was dark. All of a sudden ghosts started hovering all over the house. When they flew away the three kids decided to sleep there. They could hear a wolf howling fearlessly in the moonlight. At about 1:30 A.M. they were awakened. They turned on their flashlights and what they saw was not pleasant!


Sara opened the door and they heard witches cackling. It was scary, but they went on. They felt a light breeze on their necks. They couldn't see what it was so they lit a candle. When they turned around they saw ghosts! "I thought was lost them," said Sofia. From the corner of their eyes they could see three witches.


Fhernand and Daniela were walking when they saw a haunted house. They could hear eveil laughter coming from inside. They could feel the cool wind. One of the wooden beams from the house fell. They could smell the old wood. Cackling witches were flying around on their broomsticks.


Here is  a full story by one of my students:


A Haunted House



There was a boy in a cornfield, just walking along. After a while he came to an open space with a house in the middle. He walked to the house and up the steps. He knocked on the door. As he knocked the door just opened. He walked into the house slowly. About three feet in he heard a really loud noise. He turned around fast. 


The door had closed and locked. 


The boy, Indy, screamed for help. HELP! HELP! HELP! He walked toward a wall and put his back against it. 


After an hour Indy heard slow footsteps. He said to himself, “How will I get out of here?” The footsteps came closer. There was barely any light where he was standing. Then he remembered what the haunted house looked like. It had broken windows, old, rotten pumpkins, rusted doorknobs, words written on walls, ripped clothes, a chair missing a leg, old and dirty books, a hole on the roof, and spider-webs everywhere.


Indy took a step forward and his foot hit something. He looked down and he saw a flashlight. He bent down and picked it up. He turned it on and looked for the steps going upstairs. When he found it he walked up three steps. A bat flew at him and knocked him down. He got back up and went upstairs with his flashlight. 


There were five rooms upstairs. Indy walked into the middle one. It had a closet on the side, a bed in the middle, and a few windows on the side. He walked to the windows and tried to open them. He tried for about five aminutes. They finally opened. He looked down. Indy thought he could jump down but there were spikes. As he was looking down a skeleton jumped up and pushed Indy onto the bed. Indy kicked the skeleton out the window and into the spikes. 


He got off the bed and walked to the window. He looked down and saw that the skeleton was gone. Then he looked up. He saw witches and he knew this was a haunted house. He looked at the witches for a while. But then a witch saw him. He ran out of the room and into another room and jumped out the window. He past all the spikes. He landed on his back in a pile of leaves right by the spikes. The witches couldn’t find him. After he got out of the haunted house he looked at his watch. The time was 12:51 P.M. He got out of the pile of leaves and ran back to his house.

Halloween Stories

The holidays provide excellent opportunities for creative writing. Kids love making up stories with their favorite holidays as subject matter. A few years ago I mentioned to a friend of mine who teaches writing at the university in town, the hang-ups my colleagues have when it comes to assigning writing topics in the classroom. One of these colleagues had said, “You can’t just put a topic on the board and tell the kids to write a story!” My friend found this remark astonishing. “Why not?” she responded.

It’s important to remember that you want kids to enjoy writing. To do that you need to make the process as stress-free as possible. Provide a prompt and a few guidelines and then let them use their imagination.

These days the kids are getting quite excited about Halloween. Every year I take advantage of this excitement by having them write Halloween stories.

For the assignment last week I gave each student a picture of a dancing scarecrow. They had to write a story about the scarecrow and why it was dancing.

These were my guidelines: The story should have a beginning, middle, and end.

The Beginning: Tell about the main character/s. It could be the scarecrow and somebody else. You could be in the story, or you could write it in third person.  Give the characters names. Tell what the main character wants, or what problem they are experiencing.

The Middle: What does the main character do to try to get what he/she wants; or to solve the problem?

The End: How is the problem solved? Why is the scarecrow dancing?

I should mention that I would prefer to just put a topic on the board and have the kids write freely. However, I know my students well enough to know that only about half of them would be able to produce a solid narrative. The other half would flounder a bit. The guidelines help them come up with an actual story. My students bubbled with enthusiasm over this assignment. Their stories were rewardingly cute.

Describing the Setting

In my twenty years of being a classroom teacher there are a few students who stick out in my mind as being truly gifted writers. I had this third grade student about ten years ago at Adams School who had a natural ability to pull the reader into his story. He knew, without being taught, how to make a setting feel real by engaging the reader’s senses. He just put himself right where his story was happening and wrote the sort of details that remind you of a poet or an artist. Unfortunately, most students don’t come equipped with this gift!

Here, then, is my first lesson on teaching kids to describe a setting.

Goal: To get students to understand how to use sensory details to describe a setting.

Reminder to students: The three key elements in a story are:

1. Character
2. Setting
3. Plot

In order for a reader to fully engage with the characters in a story there needs to be a strong sense of place and time.

Step One: Picture the Setting

I asked the kids to name a place they would like to describe. Someone suggested a garden and everyone liked the idea. I asked them to close their eyes and think of a garden that they knew well and liked.
Picture this garden in your mind. What do you see? Look all over. Look to your left. What do you see? Look straight in front of you. What do you see? Look to your right.
Now take a deep breath. Breathe in the smells. What do you smell? What do the smells remind you of? Listen. Be very quiet and listen to all the sounds. Now take off your shoes. What do you feel under your feet? Touch something in the garden. How does it feel? Does it remind you of something? Okay, open your eyes now!

Step Two: Table It!

On the board I drew a table, which I cannot seem to reproduce here! It had 4 columns and 5 rows and each column was headed as follows:

Sights Sounds Smells Feel

Me: So tell me what you saw in your garden?
Student: Flowers.
Me:         I want to make a picture of those flowers in my mind. Can you tell me more about these flowers.
Student:  They were roses.
Me:        Can you tell me some details about the roses so I can picture them?
Student: They were pink roses.
Me:         Good. I wrote Pink roses in the table. What else did you see?

Each time a student gave me a vague response I pressed them to be as specific as possible. In the table under “sights” we had pink roses, small white daisies, plump, red tomatoes, a big, oak tree.
For sounds we had buzzing bees, the water fountain, and chirping birds.
Under “smells” they came up with: roses smelled like perfume, the smell of herbs
And what could they feel? Soft grass, smooth petals, dirt

Step Three: Time to Write

Since this was the first formal lesson on teaching kids to write about a setting, the writing part was a directed activity intended to model strong sentences.

Let’s look at the table and write sentences about the things we listed. We need to make sentences that are strong. Do not start with “I see ...”, “I hear … “, “I smell … “, or “I feel … “! First we need a topic sentence. Who has a good idea for one?

Student A: My grandparents have a beautiful garden.

Me: Wonderful. Anyone else with an idea?

Student B:  I love the garden because it is peaceful.

A few other kids shared ideas. I went with Student A’s sentence, and wrote it on the board.

Me: Now we need sentences that give details. Who would like to make a sentence about the pink roses? 

Student C:  The first thing that you see are the pink roses.

Me: That’s a very good sentence. Where exactly would you see the roses?

After some prompting we decided that the roses were around a fountain.

I went through the items listed in the table and encouraged the students to think up creative sentences. For example, rather than “I hear bees buzzing” I asked them to think about where you would see the bees and what they would be doing. We ended up with the following paragraph:

My grandparents have a beautiful garden. The first thing you see are pink roses around a fountain. They give off a sweet perfume. Pretty white daisies grow near the tomato plants. Bees buzz in and out of the flowers. A hummingbird beats its wings and makes a whirring sound. The soft grass tickles my feet as I walk to the tomato plant to pick a juicy, red tomato. I lean against the big oak tree and the bark feels rough on my skin. I love this graden.

The final part of the lesson is having the kids copy down the paragraph they had generated. If time permits they could illustrate this setting.

Let's Write a Poem!

I cannot stress enough the importance of poetry in a child’s education. When I recall my own childhood school days the things I remember I most enjoyed were the poems we had to memorize and the songs we sang. So I make a concerted effort to introduce my students to poems that they would enjoy reciting. This usually leads to them writing their own poem with a similar rhythm, which was the writing task for the week.

 My goals were:
 1. Writing a poem;
 2. Revising for better quality.

I accomplished this in four lessons.

Lesson One: Read, discuss, and enjoy the poem My Shadow by R. L.  Stevenson.
Lesson Two:  Memorize the first two verses (or more).
Lesson Three: Using a template, think of something you are attached to and write a poem about it/him/her.
Lesson Four: Revise each line to: 1.  Make it sound more poetic;
2. Remove awkward sounding words and phrases;
3. Replace repeated words with more powerful words;
4. Make sure each line flows into the next.

Here’s the poem:

My Shadow
by Robert Louis Stevenson


I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.


The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.


He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!


One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an errant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.


I selected this poem because I remember learning it as a kid. I never forgot it because of its enjoyable rhythm. Kids love rhyming poems too. It’s a great one for memorizing. On the first day we had several readings of the poem. We looked at the rhyming pattern and discussed the meaning of the poem.

On the second day I used my cookie bribe to get kids to memorize the first two verses. I didn’t actually need to bribe them because they loved reciting the lines. I  told them to get out of their seats and look for a quiet space in the classroom where they could learn their lines. This worked beautifully!

For the third lesson I made up a template for the kids to use to write their poems. I started by asking them how a poem was different from a story and listed their responses on a chart. We came up with the following:

1. Poems are shorter and are usually not more than a page long.
2. Stories/narratives have sentences; poems have lines.
3. Poems have rhyming lines and are like songs because they have rhythm.
4. Poems have verses, narratives have paragraphs.

Even after this clarification, kids have trouble writing poems with lines that aren’t sentences. The template helps them stick to a format that resembles a poem. To make the template I blanked out all references to the shadow. The first verse looked like this:

I have a little ____________ that __________________________
And _________________________________________________
_ is very, very _________________________________________
And I see _____________________________________________


Before this lesson the kids had already been primed for the acitivity with their journal topic that morning. I asked them to think of something they were very attached to. These could be animate or inanimate things. We did a quick brainstorm which I listed on the board: a pet, a little brother/sister, a toy, a gadget, etc. (With older kids you could ask them to think of something imaginary, or something unusual that nobody else would come up with.) They had to make a list of ten special features about the object they selected.

Having memorized the first verse or two the kids had the rhythm in their heads. As they write they will naturally try to imitate a similar rhythm. I handed out the templates. Using my document camera we worked on each line together. I chose to write about my little brother (turning back the clock a few decades). I modeled thinking up unique aspects of my subject and how to include that in this poem. I told the students that each line had to have a different idea (they had their journals open to the list they had made earlier).

A very important aspect of writing tasks in my class is the banning of certain words!! All my students learn very quickly that they cannot use the following words in any of their writing pieces:
Nice, good, great, stuff, cool, and things.

I also made it clear that if any of the words on the template didn’t work for them they could cross them off and replace them with something more suitable. I modeled changes that worked for me.

The kids responded to this assignment quite enthusiastically. I had no trouble getting them to finish their poem in the 45 minutes we had for the class.

The last phase – Day 4 - for this task was to revise the entire poem. This can be tedious for kids, so it’s important to make the process as efficient as possible. I gave them all a sheet of lined paper and asked them to get out their poems. I got out my poem and using the document camera, I read out my first line:

I have a little brother who makes me laugh

It doesn’t sound right, I said. What should I do? A few kids immediately spotted the problem. A couple of suggestions were made:

I have a little brother who makes me laugh a lot
I have a little brother who always makes me laugh.

I rewrote the first line – the second suggestion - on my new sheet of paper, then instructed them to the same for their first lines. We completed the entire first verse in this manner. After that they didn’t need any more modeling. They went to work rewriting their poems. I worked with my two struggling students at this point.

After the kids revised their poems the natural thing would be for them to come to me for editing. But I felt that they had spent enough time on this project. I want kids to love writing. I couldn’t make them do another rewrite. I collected their poems and typed them out myself. Yes, it was time consuming, but worth it to see the pride on the faces of the kids.