My Favorite Lessons to Teach in October

October is my favorite month to teach. Students are settled in, routines are working, and there's a whole season's worth of mood to borrow. Spooky season gives me an easy hook for the skills I'm teaching anyway: atmosphere, symbolism, characterization, and reading a frame as carefully as a paragraph.

Here are the lessons I come back to every October, sorted by how much "spooky" your class can handle.

1. Frankenweenie: the Halloween movie that's secretly a literature lesson

If you only teach one October film, make it this one. It's school-friendly (black-and-white, PG, no gore), but it's packed with Gothic conventions, satire, and subtext about fear of science and of outsiders. I wrote a whole post about why: Why Frankenweenie Is the Ideal Halloween Movie to Teach This Year.

How I'd sequence it:

• Before the film: Pre-Viewing & Activation Questions (free with a free account)
• During: Viewing Questions & Motif Tracking
• Close reading the film: Subtext Activities (Lightning & Town Hall scenes) and the "It's Alive!" Scene Comparisons
• Book pairing: Frankenweenie & Frankenstein: Characterization Comparisons
• Wrap it up with discussion: Frankenweenie Socratic Seminar

Want the whole thing planned out? The Full ELA Film Unit & Pacing Guide puts it all in order.

2. Coraline: my go-to intro to film analysis

Coraline works for English class and for Film Studies. The book and the film make a natural pairing, and the film is full of deliberate color, framing, and symmetry that students can actually spot on a first viewing.

• Start with vocabulary: Pre-Viewing & Intro to Film Form Vocabulary Lesson Pack, plus my free Film Form Vocabulary Cheat Sheet for students to keep in their binders
• Practice reading frames: Coraline Film Analysis Practice Pack, plus my free shot guide, Best Shots for Film Analysis in Coraline Act 1
• Reading the novel too? Reading Questions for Coraline by Neil Gaiman
• The full unit: Coraline Intro to Film Unit Bundle

3. Poe: Gothic writing students actually want to do

Poe can feel dusty until students get to write in his style themselves. I use his stories as mentor texts for atmosphere and suspense, then let students build their own Gothic story one scaffolded step at a time. The how-to is here: How to Make Edgar Allan Poe Relevant. The workbook I use is the Poe Gothic Story Writing Workbook.

Bonus pairing: Poe, Coraline, and Autumn Atmosphere.

4. For older students: real horror, taught as film

For Film Studies and upper grades (check your school's film policy first, since most of these are rated R), horror is one of the best genres for teaching film form. Every choice is built to make you feel something, so students can trace exactly how it works.

Start here: I made this short video on how directors build suspense, using the opening of It Follows. It also shows a rack focus in Coraline, so it's a nice bridge if your class already knows that film.

• The Babadook: grief, motherhood, and a monster that's never just a monster. The Babadook: Complete Film Analysis Unit
• Opening sequences, shot by shot: It Follows Opening Sequence Analysis Practice and Us Opening Sequence Viewing Questions. Opening sequences are short enough to show in class, even if you can't show the whole film.
• Something new: Sinners Viewing Questions

Not sure where to start?

Grab my free Film Form Vocabulary Cheat Sheet. It works with every film above, so students have the vocabulary to talk about what they see before they start analyzing. If you teach English, The Planning Room includes my English class library, October units included.

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