On any given day, you could walk through the sixth grade classrooms and find the students actively engaged in their learning.  Even with thoughts of ghosts, costumes, and candy haunting their thoughts, this week was no exception.

The sixth grade Saints actively read some horribly creepy short stories while focusing on inferencing, foreshadowing, summarizing, and annotating text.  Though they enjoyed reading about the fate of the White family in W. W. Jacobs “The Monkey’s Paw”, I think most of them would agree that “The Landlady” by Roald Dahl was their favorite.  Students even experimented with writing their own creepy stories while mimicking Dahl’s voice.

That’s not the only spooktacular activity students participated in this week.  Things became quite frightening in math when students practiced “Black Math”.  Even the most reluctant math student becomes excited about working out math problems when doing so under the power of a black light.

The mood did not change in science either.  Students observed the effects of differential rates of weathering with a hands-on experiment that left them witnessing their cotton candy shrinking back into a red oozing pool of goo. The groaning and creaking of rocks filled the students’ imagination as they visualized the eerie story of Devil’s Lake.  Mr. Gaul shared this story with them as part of his lesson about root pry and ice wedging.

History cannot be taught without a few of its own hauntings.  The ghosts of Andrew Johnson and Thaddeus Stevens visited the students as they gathered to debate issues of the Reconstruction era.

Had you visited our hall this week, you may not have sighted any goblins or witches, or seen a frightening sight, but you would have seen students excited about learning and engaged in all that they did.