All Hallows Read...Suspense

October 29th was All Hallows Read. The week before All Hallows Read, we saw this riddle on the board:

Beware the time is drawing nigh

      for All Hallows Read.

 A tool to illuminate your way,

 you'll most certainly need. 

After a lot of contemplating, we figured out that we needed to bring a flashlight to class, but we had not idea why.

On All Hallows Read day, our class lined up like it was a normal day, but when we entered the classroom....it was very, very different.  All the lights were off, and the only light we had were tea lights that we all over the room. On the board it said that this was All Hallows Read. We found out that for this All Hallows Read we were going learn about and practice with suspense.

First, we completed a brain drain about suspense. A brain drain is when we all right down everything we know about a topic. Once we had finished the brain drain, we discussed our ideas. Some of the things we said made things suspenseful were music, lighting, slowing things down, pauses, repetition,  foreshadowing, and imagery.

Next, we had gone over this we watched a clip from The Birds  by Alfred Hitchcock. It was the final bird attack scene, and it was VERY suspenseful. After we had finished watching it, we talked more about what made it so suspenseful. It turns out, we knew a lot about suspense.

We then read Jumanji  (in the dark by flashlight) and  talked about what made it suspenseful. It was a lot of the same elements that made The Birds suspenseful. Finally we wrote suspenseful short stories, and by short we mean 140 characters. We tweeted those out with the hashtag #allhallowsread.

This was a really fun, spooky and exciting day and we learned a lot about suspense! We really hope we can have another awesome day like this one soon!

~Allison & Emily