Text Cemetery

This lesson is appropriate for Halloween.

Objective: To teach students how to use a text box tool and format text in Microsoft Publisher and to enhance writing and thinking skills on an elementary level.

I copied and pasted a coloring page of a cemetery which contained about a dozen tombstones. I marked this file “read only”.

I engaged students in a brief discussion of things that they dislike.

I showed them a cemetery that had been labeled with things that I personally dislike for example, “RIP DIETING”, “RIP ANCHOVIES”, “RIP LAZINESS”.

I demonstrated to students how to insert/draw a textbox, format and bold fonts and label the various tombstones with their own particular brand of epitaphs.

Some of the things they came up with in labeling their tombstones: “HERE LIES LYING”, “RIP STEALING”, “RIP WAR”, “RIP MONDAYS”.

The students seemed to have a good time with them and it did reinforce use of the toolbar in Publisher as well as provide classroom teachers’ with decorative Halloween tombstone decorations.

A possible follow-up lesson is to insert a text box into a large page-sized singular tombstone on which they will write an obituary including those things they hope to accomplish in their lifetimes. For example, “Here lies Johnny Jones accomplished musician, husband and father. World traveler who discovered a cure for AIDS.”