Tag Archives: spooky story plan

Get Into the Halloween Spirit: Books, Online Course, and More!

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Happy October everyone! Are you ready to have some fun this fall? This was always my favorite time of year as a teacher. I tried to channel all of that creative excitement with Halloween into writing and language arts projects for my students. Through this, I developed a “How to Write a Spooky Story” unit that I have now made available in many different forms through the years. I’ve even written a pumpkin story that originated from one of my own spooky stories as a child. So, if you’re ready to explore the fantastic learning opportunities for your child, here is a list of all that is available that I’ve put together.

Full Online Free Spooky Story Writing Unit: This is a free online unit that I posted over five years ago. I made it a simplified version of what I used to do in my classroom, and it takes about a week. Children can follow along with each post daily, and create their own shareable story by the end. I relist the posts each year. I’ve seen visitors from around the world engage in story writing, and I’m proud to again share the links and posts to keep generations of children writing. This is great for parents or basics for teachers to assign online.

Day 1: Write Your Own Spooky Story, Create Your Main Character

Day 2: Creating a Spooky Setting Or Plot

Day 3: Starting the Rough Draft

Day 4: Continuing Rough Draft with Dialogue

Day 5: Revising and Proofreading Your Story

Day 6: Writing the Final Draft

Spooky Story Online Writing School Course: If you just want to get your child set up and running with a course that will do all the teaching for you, guess what? I’ve started my own online writing school, and have put together the above unit into a self-teaching course. It goes more in-depth than the free online one, and I’m there to support too. Check out the link below to get more information. It’s just $19.99.

For Teachers: Teachers Pay Teachers Spooky Story Unit: If you’d like to teach the unit to your own classroom, I’ve got the full writing workshop format unit I developed at Teacher Pay Teachers. I also have a unit on writing mysteries and other helpful writing lesson plans that are available. It’s just $2.95.

My own Halloween picture book story, Pumper the Pumpkin, is available online at Amazon.com. I wrote this originally when I was ten in 5th grade, and discovered the magic of writing. The main story stuck with me, and I rewrote it as an adult. This is the latest form of the story illustrated by myself. It was my first attempt at a picture book, and I learned a lot from creating it. It’s just $0.99.

So, get ready for Halloween and focus all that creative energy into creative writing for your child. All of the writing techniques work for adults too. So, if you’d like to take a stab at spooky or horror story writing along with your child, you could share the stories between you.

Happy Halloween 2021! Stay safe!

-Mrs. Turner

Tiffany Turner To Teach Online Spooky Story Writing Workshop

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It’s getting near that spooky time of year. After over 15 years of teaching a spooky story workshop to my students, I’m offering it for the first time online. Bring Halloween indoors in an academic way, and keep this season spooky, fun and safe! It will be available two ways.

1) This first way to sign up for this workshop is as a full online in-person experience taught by myself live on Zoom. It will be available through the tutoring center called Knowledge Quest. I’ve worked there now for 3 years tutoring students in person and in local schools before the pandemic.

Now, the opportunity to learn from myself, a published author and certified teacher, is through Knowledge Quest. It starts on Oct. 5 through Oct. 29. There are two sessions, one for grades 3-5 and the other for grades 6-8. Each session will have one hour a week for four sessions. Kids will have an hour of instruction and will be walked through activities and given assignments to continue writing between sessions.

**Some at home support, such as looking over the story and doing feedback with your child, will be required.

I’ve taught and developed this spooky story unit over the years and I have put up some parts of it FREE to do through my website. But this is the full unit, developed by me, and available only this upcoming month of October. By the end of the sessions, all the students will have written their own stories that they can share on Halloween night. They will learn character development, create a plot with problem/solution structure, study the spooky genre, and have a lot of fun! They’ll have a chance to unlock the creativity within them.

**Note times are Pacific Daylight Time since I’ll be teaching the workshop live through Zoom. Sign-ups for the live Zoom instructional spooky workshop is through Knowledge Quest.

Find out more and REGISTER HERE!

2) The second way to take the workshop, especially if it would be difficult to in your time zone, is to sign up for my online writing school course. It’s the first course available, and I plan to develop more through the next several months. I’ve decided to develop the spooky story writing workshop first since the basic posts on the blog are so popular, and my students loved it as their favorite story during the school year.

Here is the blurb from my writing school “Keep On Writing”:

Ready to have some fun writing? Here’s a course to help children love writing and enjoy it. I often found children didn’t get to enjoy the writing projects assigned when I was a teacher. So, I developed an, exciting “Spooky Story” writing project for the month of October that I taught for over fifteen years in my classroom. Now, your child can experience the joy of writing and using their imagination.

Taught through a Writing Workshop format, I go over all the steps of writing, prewriting, drafting, revision and proofreading and creating a final draft. Each lesson includes mini-lessons on the craft of writing including organizing ideas through graph organizers, writing dialogue, “Show, Don’t Tell”, plot creation, character creation and conflict, and problem/solution story structure.

Write your own Spooky Story in either a live workshop with Mrs. Turner or in her online writing school. Get spooky and stay safe this Halloween! Use your imagination and write!

When your child finishes the course, they will have a fantastic story of their own creation to share with family and friends. As they go through the writing process, they are asked to work with a family member or guardian with the writing process in which they learn to gain feedback on their writing and make changes. Anyone in the family or through Zoom can fulfill this role making it a bonding activity with your child.

Whether this course is being used during the fall for a Halloween project or any time during the year to engage children in writing, or help adults write for children, it has always been a student and child favorite. I now present to you, the “Spooky Story” Writing Project to help bring the joys of writing to your child.

The online writing school course is $19.99.

LINK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE & REGISTER!

**Happy Halloween!

-Mrs. Turner

Day 2: Online Novel Study and Other Activities

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Welcome everyone. Today is day two of activities and information for my online novel study for my book, The Lost Secret of Fairies. I’ve written several writing activities and lessons that are available through the website, Teachers Pay Teachers. I’ve put every lesson in the story on sale for 20% off (the most discount I’m allowed to give). There are writing story units, book report activities, and free writing download activities. The sale runs today, March 16th through March 19th. Check it all out here:

Making Writing Fun-Mrs. Turner’s Writing Lessons and Packets Online Store

Plus, I wanted to post the links for the full Spooky Story online unit that I wrote a few years ago to go along with Halloween. It is still fun to do all year long, and can take up to a week to complete. There are downloadable graphic organizers in the free blog edition, with more detailed instructions and worksheets in the store edition. I hope it helps in creating learning experiences for your little one(s) at home.

haunted character

Keep the kids learning at home with this Spooky Story Unit.

Day 1: Spooky Story Unit

Day 2: Spooky Story Unit

Day 3: Spooky Story Unit

Day 4: Spooky Story Unit

Day 5: Spooky Story Unit

Tomorrow, I’ll have some comprehension questions for those of you that have started reading The Lost Secret of Fairies. Until then, happy reading and writing.

-Tiffany Turner

 

 

 

Halloween & Spooky Story Project: Step By Step Plan to Keep Your Kids or Students Busy Until Halloween

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haunted character

Create your own spooky story this week with a step by step plan. Click on Day 1 below to get yourself started.

Note: This whole activity is available online at my new “Keep On Writing” Online Writing School. It’s set up as a tutorial to allow kids to work at their own pace with more in depth instruction. For more information, LINK HERE!

So, I am currently a semi-retired teacher writing full-time. But when I was teaching, I would teach my class one of my most loved and remembered writing units: A Write It Yourself Spooky Story Unit! I would spend a whole week, sometimes two, with my students writing a spooky story that they would then read-aloud on Halloween. We would spend the whole day in school reading them, and I’ve been told year after year, it was the one thing that my students remembered from being in my class.

So, I will share with you now, the step by step plan for getting your kids (or yourself) motivated and channeling that nervous Halloween energy into something productive. I first wrote these posts back in 2015. The links will take you to the original instructional posts.

If you are a teacher, and would like the full lesson plan for this unit. It is available on Teachers Pay Teachers in my Writing Is Fun Store.

Below is the list of each step. The link will take you to the post with all the information you need to get started.

Day 1: Write Your Own Spooky Story, Create Your Main Character

Day 2: Creating a Spooky Setting Or Plot

Day 3: Starting the Rough Draft

Day 4: Continuing Rough Draft with Dialogue

Day 5: Revising and Proofreading Your Story

Day 6: Writing the Final Draft

Pumper

Pumper the Pumpkin: A Halloween Tale by Tiffany Turner is a Kindle Unlimited title.

Also to celebrate Halloween, I’ve put my Halloween picture book, Pumper the Pumpkin, on sale for FREE from Friday Oct. 27 – Tuesday Oct. 31. I wrote the first draft when I was 10 years old and promised myself to finish it when I got older. I did.

So, have fun writing with your class or children this week. Or maybe you’re the child writer, and you’d like to take this on. Go for it! It may be the start of a new adventure for you. Writing is fun and challenging, and so worth the effort of seeing people enjoy your story.

Be sure to comment and let me know how you like this post. I’d love to hear what kind of stories you all come up with.

**If you liked this post or others, please be sure to follow my blog. My fourth book in the Crystal Keeper Chronicles is complete and is going through the revision process. So, get on the newsletter and blog list today. Be sure to get all the updates and informative posts coming up in the next several months!

And of course, HAPPY HALLOWEEN! WAAAHHAHHHHAHAHHAH!

-Tiffany Turner