There's no better way to express your students’ Halloween spirit than through poetry. Halloween, the spookiest time of the year, offers a wealth of inspiration for students. 

Use these ideas to unleash creativity in your classroom this spooky season.

Haiku is always a great choice for students of all ages. The short length of the haiku format makes it manageable for young learners and provides an opportunity for more experienced writers to challenge themselves with creative word choice and imagery. 

You can assign a general haiku template from the Curriculum Activities library or use one of the spooky-themed Halloween haiku templates to get your students creating today. 

For even more spooky poetry fun, introduce your students to blackout poetry. To write a blackout poem, students use the paint brush tool to circle words that interest them on the page and then blackout the rest. For example,  students can use The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and circle words to reveal mysterious aspects of Halloween. Their chosen words will then weave together to form a unique poem.  

To get students started, assign one of the many blackout poetry templates, such as: 

Challenge your students to create creepy concrete poems. In this fun form of poetry, words are arranged in a shape that reflects the topic or theme of the poem. Encourage students to craft Halloween-themed verses using short phrases or stanzas, then arrange each phrase in a shape like a ghost, a witch's hat, or a pumpkin.

Students can add each phrase to its own text box, drag it to move it, and use the rotate handle to write their poem in a Halloween shape. Share with students that they can also incorporate different font styles, sizes and colors to help illustrate their poems. 

Add a little bit of humor to Halloween poetry by exploring limericks. With a playful twist, students can create humorous verses featuring witches, mischievous monsters, or clumsy ghosts. The lighthearted nature of limericks pairs well with the whimsical side of Halloween.

Wixie includes many limerick templates to support student writing. 

Ask students to imagine they are visiting a haunted house to craft a five-senses poem. Five-senses poems are a great way for students to practice descriptive writing as students include vivid imagery and vocabulary to describe what they see, hear, smell, and feel.

Assign the Haunted House Five Senses template for students to create and share their sensory-rich writing. 

Introduce your students to acrostic poems, where each letter of a word spells out something related to that word. For Halloween, students can choose words like "GHOST," and "PUMPKIN,"  or come up with something on their own and have each letter inspire a line of poetry. 

Combine art and poetry by asking students to use symmetry to create bizarre creatures around a self-portrait and then write a poem about the surreal image they created. 

Students can write a quatrain or other rhyming poem. A quatrain is a four-lined poem, which includes a rhyme on lines 2 and 4. 

Here's to crafting the most enchanting Halloween poems this spine-chilling season! 

Happy Haunting!