The start of a new academic year brings the fall. Shorter days, warmer clothing and the arrival of the holidays! Halloween is branded as a child's day. Dressing up and trick or treating is designated for the young. However, the theme and fun spirit of this fright holiday can be used in an ESL classroom for any age or level.
For young learners: Granted this group is the easiest one to use Halloween lesson plans. After learning and playing with the Halloween vocabulary, there are a bunch of activities to do that will fill one or two classes. Check out some fun printable ideas for young learners here. Set it up for your youngins and jam out to some haunted, fun Halloween songs playing in the background.
For the pre-teens and teens: The hardest group to please. Most teachers ignore this day(if not all of them). But I love festivities, so here is a few things you can try if you are like me.
- The ghost of Halloween past, present and future. Now this Charles Dickens' spin on Halloween can be used to talk about personal lives of your students or the world/country in general. (Provide a summary copy for the 'I don't know' drones that roam into your class). Pair students up. Be sure to switch pairs at least twice. Students choose a ghost to represent and speak about the holiday in the correct grammar for 1-2 minutes, depending on the level. Students ask questions or give comments after the time is up. Students vote on the best ghost for each period in time. Winners get a sweet. Great talking and moving around warmer.
- Halloween team names. I love doing competitive games with this group. So this time around teams get to choose a Halloween name.
- Fright write. Give students prompts to choose from or they can choose their own. Work individually, pairs, or groups. Give time to write a paragraph or two scary story. Then have them do a dramatic reading in class. Bring a flashlight, eerie music and turn off the classroom lights for extra fun.
- 'Thriller' song fill in the blank. Show parts of the video and dare students to do their best MJ impression.
- Fun computer game. Do a textbook exercise for each answer a student gets right, they get to play this cool zombie game: http://www.kongregate.com/games/AtomicCicada/i-remain
- How to crave a pumpkin listening activity- http://www.myenglishclub.com/profiles/blogs/how-to-carve-a-pumpkin-audio
For the older teens and adults: Here are great places to get that Halloween spirit going.
Enjoy! Happy Halloween!
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This is a resource for teachers in ESL. To help the community, please leave comments about other ideas that have worked for you, or how some of these ideas have been successful in your classroom. Thank You.