It’s a spooky season here! Since early October it’s time when the world turns golden and so autumn-ish. Pumpkins are everywhere and people start to look for costumes. What about Halloween in the ESL classroom? For English classes, it’s a perfect time to provide some learning opportunities – cultural gaps, first of all. Of course, your students know what Halloween is, but mostly from movies and the Internet. It’s time to tell the story of it, enhance vocabulary, and add some DIY crafts if you like.
The best way is to start from the conversation – ask your students what they know about Halloween. Share your experience of celebrating. A good anecdote is always good for making connections with your students. Add some real history, prepare slides.
So, what exactly can you offer to your students for these special lessons?
Classroom Halloween Activities
1- Warm-up :
It’s an important part of every lesson, but for seasonal, it’s even more. Start from some atmosphere. Add some pumpkin elements in a class or at least draw it on the chalkboard. Lit the candle and draw the curtains. It’s better to sit in a circle, but it depends on your classroom organization.
As said before, start with questions and your short story (you can even make it up).
Question examples:
1) Do you celebrate Halloween at home?
2) Have you read books/watch movies/saw cartoons about Halloween? What was it about? How do you like it?
3) Do you know about trick-or-treating? Have you ever been to it?
4) What kind of costume would you like to wear?
Engage in discussion, embrace questions between students. Control their vocabulary. You can offer them to use Halloween-themed vocabulary. Prepare it by yourself or find it on the web.
2-Spooky story writing :
First of all, start by telling some basic myths. Then say you need short but scary stories to be written and shared next time. If it’s EFL class and culture of your students is so different, offer them help with research. In the next lesson share stories and vote for the spookiest. It will be fun.
3- Halloween Classroom Haunted House :
It needs some preparation. Prepare some materials like cheesecloth, colored paper, scissors, candles and everything you think is necessary.
Ask your students about how they offer you to transform the classroom into the Haunted House. What spooky decorations can help it to look like an ancient castle with ghosts or a house with a mysterious past?
It’s good for students’ discussion and vocabulary skills, you’ll also make some DIY which is essential for developing creativity.
4- Halloween Tongue twisters
Does your class like challenges? A nice method to make the pronunciation better is to use tongue twisters. Below are some examples of a tongue twister you can offer. Let the student start from reading (and explaining, if they don’t get it). Then you should encourage them to say it five times in a row with a higher speed each time.
- Crazy children crave candy wearing chilling costumes.
- If two witches would watch two watches. Which witch would watch which watch?
- Creepy crawling critters crawl carelessly through crazy creepy corridors.
- If big black bats could blow bubbles, how big of bubbles would big black bats blow?
- Seven spindly spiders spin spooky silk speedily.
- Glowing ghosts gobble goodies.
- Musty mummies make monster masks.
Do they see similar patterns in all these tongue twisters? Ask them to create their own with new words you learned before.
5-Halloween Idioms
What can be better for learning a language than diving up into culture? Idioms are culture itself because they are so different in different countries. Despite these examples are Halloween-connected, they can be used all year round. Here is a short list of idioms you can use for class. Feel free to find more!
- Blind as a bat
- It is dead and buried
- A dead loss
- Drop-dead
- Dead center
- Dead on my feet
- Devil in disguise
- Dig your own grave
- Pale as a ghost
- Skeleton in the closet
