Are you ready to brew up some fun Halloween-themed literacy activities this October? You’re in the right place because we’ve conjured a spellbinding list of upper elementary Halloween literacy activities that are perfect for your upper elementary students! Your students will become detectives tasked with unraveling a creepy Halloween inference mystery, participate in spinetingling reader’s theater, engage in spooky reading skill review, and more! It’s time to grab your witch’s hat and transform your classroom into a ghoulish delight!

Each of these upper elementary Halloween literacy activities is guaranteed to provide seasonal fun while also addressing your important literacy standards, so don’t feel guilty getting into the Halloween spirit with these!

Halloween Literacy Activities

Are you looking for a way to incorporate HALLOWEEN in upper elementary and still meet important academic standards? Look no further! These Halloween Literacy activities are perfect for 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grade classrooms.

I NEED ThESE!

Halloween Books for Literacy Lessons

Have you read any of the books from Gustavo’s World (Amazon affiliate link)? They are the perfect foundation for several Halloween literacy lessons! 

Halloween Story Elements Lesson

I love using picture books to teach important literacy skills, so I used the same book trio to compare characters, character traits, character change, and theme. This Halloween set also addresses important social and character development themes like perfectionism, acceptance, and more (which we’ll focus on in the morning meeting lesson below!).

By teaching with these three related books, it offers such a great opportunity for students to connect and compare them as paired texts. It’s an academic-heavy but super engaging lesson!

Halloween Morning Meeting Lesson

During morning meeting, I asked my students to take five minutes to create their own character who would live in the World of Gustavo — a world of spooky characters who teach us important lessons about life. I gave them a small piece of Play-Doh to create their character, and then we all shared. They did an amazing, thoughtful job!

As an example, Sally the Scared Spider teaches us that it’s okay to be scared, but gives us strategies to overcome our fears.

From the minds of my students, we also had…

• William the worried wolf who teaches us to not sweat the small stuff.
• Susan the Sure Skeleton who teaches us to be sure of ourselves (confident) even if we’re a little bit different.
• … and so many more!

This Find Someone Who… Halloween activity is another great option for morning meeting and a way to get students up, moving, and building connections with their classmates. With prompts such as “Find someone who does not like candy,” students are prompted to have real conversations with other kids in the class, not just rush to collect signatures. Visit this post for tips on how to get the most out of activities like this!

More Halloween Read Alouds

Looking for more October book suggestions? This post has more of my favorite fall and Halloween read alouds, along with different fall literacy activities that are all great for upper elementary.

Halloween Reading Project

This Halloween-themed reading project is FUN for students and the perfect way to practice and review a variety of key reading and writing skills in real-life ways while preparing a Fall Festival for their community.

Before the festival planning begins, students can design and create their own “Fall Fest Facilitator” badges to make it official! While students plan the festival, they will keep track of their learning in their Fall Festival Planning Booklet.

This project covers Inference, Persuasive Writing, Informative Writing, Character Traits, Reading Comprehension, Theme, Summarizing, Context Clues, Figurative Language, Parts of Speech, Descriptive Language, Synthesizing Information, Text Analysis, Literal vs. Inferential Observations, Point of View and Perspective.

Halloween Fluency Practice

Fluency practice is a must every single day, so why not have a little spooky fun at the same time? 

You can use these fluency task cards with varied sentence types to help your students practice their oral reading fluency throughout the entire month of October! 

• I had each of my students read each card three times (repeated readings) in an independent reading center. 
• I have also had students read the cards to each other, taking turns, in an independent center. 
• I also had a teacher use them to do a quick reading warm up, giving each student a card, and having him or her read it out loud to the entire class. 
• You can use these 32 different times for warm ups, giving students a different card each time!

Then combine fluency and reading comprehension with these hair-raising reader’s theater scripts! I created the scripts with a variety of group sizes to make sure all students have several chances to speak in each script. This also allows for easier differentiation because you can put students in different sized groups based on their skills and strengths. 

Each play has a one-page reader task that asks students to think critically about the content of their play and focuses on a single key reading skill AND audience comprehension tasks that hold all of your students accountable.

If you’re new to using reader’s theater to teach literacy skills, check out this post for more tips to get the most out of it!

Halloween Inference Practice

If you’re looking for the MOST ENGAGING Halloween reading activity, this is it! Turn your students into detectives tasked with solving a Halloween mystery with these inferencing centers that are both rigorous and fun. The trick-or-treaters in the town of Spooksville did such an amazing job of dressing up for Halloween that some of their identities still remain a mystery, so your students will have to use their inference skills to unravel the mystery.

For even more inference practice, add on these Halloween-themed inference task cards that use text, pictures, and riddle formats.

Halloween Context Clues Practice

These fun and easy-to-prepare Halloween context clues activities have no prep required! Just print them out and use them as a literacy center OR break them up into several engaging lessons that align to your upper elementary standards. Just look at how fun they are!

• Witches’ Brew – Use context clues to figure out the meaning of nonsense words in a spooky recipe.
• Creepy Crawlies – Determine the meaning of underlined words while reading about spiders in some spooktacular informational reading.
• Spooky Stories – Find an appropriate synonym to replace the underlined words in a spooky story.
• Mad Scientist – Fill in the blanks with an appropriate word in a Halloween story about a mad scientist!
• Mad Mail Mystery – Complete a letter with words that make sense in a mad-libs-style writing activity.
• Candy Chaos – Use context clues to decipher a text message with unfamiliar words.
• Monster Words – Use context clues to determine what monsters mean in a spooky script!

Halloween Reading Logic Puzzles

You can also enrich and extend your reading lessons and student reading comprehension with these Halloween reading logic puzzles that help students solve a fun reading mystery. They are the perfect way to build critical thinking in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. 

More Halloween Literacy Skills Practice

These Halloween reading task cards have a fun October theme and address important events in US history, doubling the educational value. Have them on hand all month long for reading centers, warm ups, enrichment, or games like SCOOT.

Finally, enjoy this free set of 16 simile and metaphor task cards that also have a ghostly Halloween theme!

Need Upper Elementary Halloween Math Ideas?

If you love these Halloween literacy ideas, then head to this post with upper elementary Halloween math ideas next!