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Grades 5–6
Fantasy/SciFi, Narrative
Sparks

Monster Scattergories

Lindsay Ringwald
Students will learn to be empathetic towards those who are different by brainstorming scary characteristics of specific monsters and then developing more positive aspects to their nature.
What Your Students Will Learn

In this activity, students are asked to play Scattergories to brainstorm characteristics about spooky monsters.

Through this task, students will learn to be empathetic towards those who are different by first thinking about the scary characteristics of monsters and then discussing the more positive aspects to their nature.

What You Will Do

Start the activity off by asking your students to discuss the nastiest, surliest creatures out there. You can start off with the classics like Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, and ask your students to suggest more. What are some of their characteristics?

Next, play Scattergories!

Each round, call out a letter and a monster and give each student 2 minutes to write down as many scary characteristics or personality as possible, starting with the selected letter for the assigned monster. There can be two or three rounds of this to get the students going.

Next, play another two to three rounds of Scattergories, but this time, with a twist! Ask your students to only list positive attributes about these monsters.

End the activity with a discussion: How could these positive attributes make life easier for the monsters? For example, Yeti hugs keep you warm, and Frankenstein can get to hard-to-reach objects.

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