Scary Costume

Scary Costume

With an evil eye that can stop you cold,
and a bulbous warty nose,
a furrowed brow, a nasty scowl,
and old out-dated clothes,
my costume is the scariest
the world has ever seen.
I'm not an ogre, ghost, or ghoul,
I'm a teacher for Halloween.

Scary Costume is from Robert Pottle's
book MOXIE DAY and Family.

Lessons for students of various ages and abilities.

Catch the Poetry Bug for more poetry, lessons, and learning.

Lesson by Robert Pottle.
Illustration by Jonathan Siruno.
All lessons, poems and images
Copyright © 2001

Blue Lobster Press

See detailed plans in a printer friendly format.


Intro: Read all but the last line of the poem Scary Costume to students in Groups 1, 3, 4, and 5 before they do their activities. Read all but the last line of Scary Costume to students in Group 2 after they do their activity. Tell all groups the last line of the poem is missing. It is important not to read the last line of the poem until the conclusion of all activities .

Note to coordinating teachers: Labeling the papers will spoil some of the tasks. The easiest way to keep tack of what papers are supposed to be matched together is to make a copy of each paper produced and label the copies while using the originals for the activities.


Group 1: Draw a picture of the scary costume.

Group 2: Write detailed description of the pictures drawn by Group 1.

Group 3: Match descriptions written by Group 2 with pictures drawn by Group 1.

Group 4: Draw picture using only the descriptions written by Group 2.

Group 5: Match pictures drawn by Group 1 with pictures drawn by Group 4.


Conclusion: Staple all matching original papers together and circulate to the different groups so that all students who worked on this project can see what the other groups did. After they have viewed the papers read the entire poem - including the last line - to the groups.

See detailed plans in a printer friendly format.