My favourite writing activity for the end of October is creating persuasive and descriptive haunted house ads—written for prospective monsters!
If you're looking for a writing activity your students will absolutely love, this is it!
Lesson Plan: Descriptive Haunted House
Introduction: I start by reading local house ads online with the class to get students familiar with how listings are written. We discuss who might be interested in these houses and what features stood out.
Front-loading Vocabulary: After introducing the writing activity, I build a brain map with spooky vocabulary students can use in their haunted house descriptions. Words like “spooky,” “bloody,” “creaky,” “draught,” “cauldron,” “vampire blood,” and more. I’ll even doodle little icons (like bats or headstones) to support my EAL students.
Writing: Here’s the assignment. Students are encouraged to keep these key points in mind:
- Audience: Who are you attracting? Witches? Monsters? Vampires? Why would this house appeal to them?
- Key Features: List 3-4 spooky selling points—creaky floorboards? Broken windows? Perfect!
- Catchy Title: Use alliteration if possible to make it pop!
Students typically get 2–3 class periods to draft their 5-ish sentence ad. Once the rough drafts are done, they create their polished final copies.
Haunted house artwork paired with student advertisements.
In art class, we create haunted house silhouettes using black oil pastels and watercolor backgrounds to complement the writing pieces.
When finished, students mount their ads and artwork on black or orange construction paper to make them stand out.
Final display with writing and art combined.
The creativity really shines in these ads! Students thoughtfully consider their “buyers” and craft some hilarious and spooky listings.
These are the kinds of writing lessons where students can’t wait to participate!
More Halloween Activities?
Keep the Halloween spirit alive with my Solve the Room math activity! Students must identify place values (up to 100,000) to solve fun Halloween riddles. Once completed, they can colour their map and escape the Haunted Ghoul School!
Students love solving silly riddles and escaping zombies from their haunted school—all while reinforcing place value skills!
There you have it—Halloween writing in the morning, and spooky place value math in the afternoon! Enjoy!
Maryana