Wicked Words

On Friday we read aloud the book called The Night of The Pumpkin Heads by Michael J. Rosen.  The story depicts a group of restless pumpkin heads that are tired of spending every Halloween sitting on the porch while all the kids get to dress-up and go trick-or-treating.  This, year they decide to have a contest to see who can disguise themselves into the most fearsome creatures.  One of the many great features of this book, are the great descriptive words Rosen uses to describe the pumpkin heads.

After reading the book, students were asked to work with a partner and try to recall two or three of the "triple-scoop words" (a term used by Adrienne Gear in her book Writing Power) shared in the book.   We then came back together as a class and created the chart below.

Then I held a contest for the students in the class.   In small cooperative groups they were to brainstorm as many "triple-scoop"words they could thinking of to describe various Halloween costumes.   Division 5 came up with many wickedly, wonderful words!