Halloween. 6 offbeat activities for your thematic lesson

This year has surprised us quite a lot, nothing seems to go right in 2020. However, there are some traditions that remained unchanged. One of them is celebrating Halloween by having a magical English lesson with our students.

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Today we will present you some unusual exercises. They will be good for pre-intermediate and higher level teenagers.

1. Role plays Halloween

Role plays are great to practice speaking and to use active vocabulary.

Can be adapted to individual or group lessons.

Situation 1

Student 1: a child is knocking at someone’s door to get a trick or treat.

Student 2: a host of the house.

The host of the house opens the door and greets the kid. The kid should get what he/she wants, the host reacts according to their mood. Here are some options:

1. The host is delighted to see the guest at his door, but the kid is shy and feels a bit embarrassed to ask for a treat.
2. The host hasn’t had the best day of his life. He (she) has even forgotten that it was Halloween night so the knock at the door had him (her) growling in irritation. On the other hand, the kid is naughty and feels like playing a trick.

Situation 2

Student 1: you come to a shop with different costumes for Halloween. You’d like to get the most striking clothes you could ever find there.

Student 2: You are a shop assistant. You should try your best to make the customer happy and help them find the most suitable costume.

Situation 3

You are planning to throw a Halloween party at home. You and your friend(s) need to decide how to decorate the house, create a menu, and think of some exciting activities to do together.

2. Terrifying pictures

Look at some scary paintings. Describe them. Explain what feelings they awake in you.

Do you know who painted these? What feelings do you think the creators tried to depict?

3. Scary associations

Start a brainstorming session and ask your students to share what associations they have with Halloween. Use these categories: candies, entertainment, costumes and add whatever is relevant for your class/student.

Then your teens pick one of the categories, for example, “candy”, and think of the words starting with the letters of the word “candy”.

Example: candy starts with “c” so it can be “chocolate”

The next letter is “a” so it can be “assorted” etc.

Then they can pick another category, for instance, “costumes” and do the same kind of task with it.

4. A spooky story

Create a spooky and adventurous story together with your student. The teacher starts the story with the opening line:

“I went to a haunted house and saw a ghost in the knight’s armour”. The student continues with: “The armor was shining so brightly in the dark.” And so the story goes on while students take turns.

5. Magic potions

This task will not only stimulate creativity in your students but also help them train their writing skills.

Imagine that you are a real magician and you have to invent your own magic potion.

You can use the following ingredients or just come up with some unusual components.

Snake blood

Sea acorn 

Giant’s finger

Glowing dust

Sidewalk flower

A wing of a purple butterfly

Bearded moss

Mountain flower

6. Halloween quiz

Present your students with some true and some false facts about Halloween. Let them guess which ones are real, and which ones aren’t.

1. The original symbol of Halloween was a turnip, not a pumpkin.
2. The word “Halloween” literally means “the Day of All Witches”.
3. Some people are terrified of Halloween, and there is even a name for that phobia:  samhainophobia.
4. When you go trick or treating, traditionally you have to bring a black cat with you.
5. Teens and older kids will have to pay a fine if they go trick-or-treating.
6. In the US they spend nearly 4 million dollars  on Halloween preparations.
7. The heaviest pumpkin featured on Halloween weighed 1,446 pounds (655,895 kg).
8. This year on Halloween night it is going to be a full moon.

Key:

1. True

2. False (It means “All Hallows’ Eve»)

3. True

4. False

5. True

6. False. 2,5 million dollars

7. True

8. True

Additionally,  you can ask your students to think about a few true and a few false facts about Halloween, present them to their peers and let them try to guess whether the facts they hear are true or false. Allow them to browse a little and write some facts down. This way you’ll make the game more intriguing. Here, you can find some tongue twisters to have fun in your Halloween lesson.