Gravestone Rubbings

6th grade students visited the historic cemetery on Pine Street last Tuesday. In English Language Arts class, students are currently reading 'The Graveyard Book' by Neil Gaiman. In celebration of the novel, students created 'gravestone rubbings' which can be viewed on the wall outside of the grade 5-6 classroom. Gravestone rubbing is the practice of creating an image from a stone's surface on paper. The image records features such as natural textures, inscribed patterns or lettering.
Students also recreated specific scenes from the book including a ‘ghoul gate’ scene, pictured below. They also tried to imagine where certain events could have taken place from ‘The Graveyard Book’.

The last part of the trip was spent reading a few passages from the text while in the cemetery. Students agreed that reading in the cemetery made the text feel ‘more real than ever’.

This was a perfect adventure for our novel, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect with the upcoming Halloween holiday!