Halloween Room Transformation~The Raven

Since I teach with IReady Florida and we were pretty much on pace with the curriculum we were studying poems during the week of Halloween. Not just poems, finding the theme of a poem.  Halloween is a half day and crazy. So I decided I would just add to the crazy and do a spooky room transformation and read The Raven by Poe. I was worried about the scaffolding I thought I would have to do.
 

Turns out my kiddos didn't need all that much scaffolding. And they totally nailed the theme. The discussion they had about the guilt vs. loss the narrator felt was amazing. I am still in awe. 

If you haven't done a room transformation yet I highly recommend you do. I was doubtful about how my kids would react but they were so engaged and receptive to my lesson it made a believer out of me. 

All it took was 4 black table cloths, some electric candles and a few fake bones from the Halloween section of the dollar tree.  All in all I spent $8 on the transformation. But I plan on using the table cloths for a book tasting transformation....yes I'm hooked. 

I printed the poem for each of the kiddos from the poetryfoundation.org they have a great no nonsense platform and I was able to get the full poem down to three pages with tons of room to make notes in the margins etc.