Year 3 Teacher

Wherever possible, we endeavour to plan for cross-curricular topic links between subjects, such as literacy, maths, and science.

Sometimes, we are even able to incorporate worldwide holiday events, as learning opportunities within the classroom. Students are so enthusiastic about these events that if we can give them some tasks to complete that connect with it, they will be more engaged in the lesson.

In Term 1B, the worldwide event of Halloween takes place on the 31st of October. This provided us with an opportunity to complete a fun writing activity. The goal of the activity was for students to create their own haunted house and to produce a ‘For Sale’ advertisement. However, the audience was not your everyday ‘normal’ family; they had to create an advertisement that would persuade a Witch to buy their house. Therefore, to appeal to a Witch’s preferences, for this activity, students needed to design and describe the scariest, most disgusting and haunted house they could imagine.

In Year 3, part of our literacy curriculum requires us to write descriptively using expanded noun phrases and selecting interesting vocabulary. This task was a perfect first introduction to descriptive writing. Students completed a small range of literacy activities before building up to the main task; writing a creative advertisement based upon the image of the haunted house that they had drawn and decorated.

Students loved being able to draw and decorate their own houses. Then, using these houses as their inspiration and after an initial brainstorm to choose some appropriate nouns and adjectives, students worked on some sensory writing. They had to think carefully about what they would see, hear, feel (physically and emotionally) and smell if they entered a haunted house. After that, the next step was to complete a graphic organiser where they could gather their thoughts and write out a draft ‘rough’ version of their advertisements, using a guided framework to help them compose paragraphs. They had to think about what it would be like inside their house on the ground floor, upstairs, outside and the general neighbourhood in which it is situated. Finally, the students wrote out their final, neat version of their advertisement after making some edits to improve their vocabulary choices.

It was wonderful to see how engaged the students were creating and describing their ‘Haunted Houses for Sale’ advertisements. The students really impressed me with their creativity, producing great results that showcased their improving literacy skills.