Monster Exchange

The kids were very excited about Halloween last week, so we decided to incorporate some Halloween fun into our Writer's Workshop lessons with our "Monster Exchange." The students all drew a monster of their choice. Then we discussed how good writers add lots of description to their writing to help the reader create a "mental image" of what is happening. The students wrote a descriptive paragraph of their monsters, trying to describe in great detail how their monster looked. On Halloween, I played some of my favorite 80s music (think Ghostbusters and Thriller) and the kids exchanged paragraphs with a partner and tried to draw their partner's monster, without looking, based on the descriptive paragraph. The kids had a great time and a better understanding that it's so important to include lots of description in their writing.