Lit Lesson: A Ghost Story

Halloween is around the corner, and that means it’s time to make some spooky music! This lesson provides an easy way to tie music to a book, and because the activity is so general you can shape it in several ways to fit in with what you are already learning.

One of my favorite Halloween lessons uses A Ghost Story by Bill Martin Jr with pictures by Eric Carle. Here is the book on Amazon. If you prefer to use Dark Dark Room, that is here. Since it doesn’t exclusively list Halloween, most of my students who don’t celebrate holidays also feel comfortable participating. I usually have something ready for them to do just in case, though.

The book is similar to the common story I remember reading as a kid, “A Dark Dark Room.” It is very formulaic: In a dark dark (noun) there was a dark dark (noun), and in that dark dark (noun) there was a dark dark (noun), so on and so forth. We eventually discover a ghost, who eventually discovers your pocket, and then… HE’S GOT YOU!

This book has so many possibilities! You can compare and contrast major and minor, talk about mood, focus on chords, focus on dynamics and crescendo in particular, really the options are endless.

For the older groups, we play an A minor chord on “dark dark” on tone bars. I allow them to choose what to play when, as long as it is A, C, or E. Students can choose to play the same thing each time, or change it up each time. (Yay for self-differentiation!) With the younger kids I dictate what they play, usually octave As or AC.

Once the kids have the basics down, we decide what we can do to make the book even spookier. My school uses thinking maps, so we use a bubble map at this point to brainstorm. Common choices the kids make include using chimes for the ghost, adding in my bigger drums later in the story, and adding a rainstorm with rain sticks and a thunder tube. I also like to have a few kids play Bb to add dissonance to the A minor chord.

Recording is a must for this book, students love hearing themselves play! I use a cheap plug-in microphone (similar one here) and audacity (free and awesome program, available here) to record class performances. We choose which take we like the best, and send it to their classroom teachers.

I hope you and your students have a blast with this ghost story!