Keep Calm and Teach English

Browsing through templates for powerpoint and google presentations, I came across a Halloween template in Slides Carnival that was just too beautiful to ignore. So I transferred one of my older lessons about the origins of Halloween into these slides making a few changes. For example, I added a KWL chart   at the beginning of the lesson to activate students' interest and have them ask their own questions about this popular custom.  Questions such as: W hy do people celebrate Halloween?, Is it really an American tradition?, Who was Jack-O- Lantern? and many more can be answered in the text.  I also changed some of the True - False questions to make them easier to remember as students are not going to have a printed version of the text.  The crossword can be downloaded separately.  If you've used it, how did the lesson go? Let me know in the comments below!

A "This is Britain" video on Halloween for younger learners together with worksheets to use in the classroom.  photo by  Bekir Dönmez

LearningApps.org is a Web 2.0 application that allows you to create interactive teaching modules to support your lessons. It is very simple and straightforward in its use and requires no special digital skills. Every module created is public and can be used by any teacher interested. photo by  Karita88 Among the formats offered are games like 'Who wants to be a millionaire?", matching pairs, clozed tests, crosswords,  activities on  audio/video material, group puzzles etc.  If you feel it is too much work you can search  among the already made modules, like for example this simple matching activity I created for my 1st Grade (of Junior High) students. It can be used as a pre-reading activity for  Halloween related lessons .  

If, like me, you are working with minimal equipment or you just prefer the advantages a pen and paper classroom has to offer, then search no more. British Coucil's Learn English has everything an EFL teacher can dream of. Concerning Halloween, you can find a magazine article together with a downloadable audio file, a pre-reading vocabulary activity and a comprehension task. They work both on screen and on paper. photo by  Renee_Olmsted Oxford University Press offers an equally interesting array of Halloween resources for Pre-Intermediate to Higher Intermediate learners with  Scary Collocations, Ghoulish Word Forms, Frightful Idioms, a Shadowy Web Quest and guidelines for writing a Ghost Story! There is also a list of Bookworm ghost stories and activities you can do with your class.  For vocabulary consolidation you can use the crossword from my Halloween lesson . For even more Halloween fun there is the Ultimate Hal...

Older students will probably appreciate the more challenging history of Halloween from National Geographic...

Halloween is celebrated on the 31st October in the USA and in Britain. It is a tradition that is very appealling to children and teenagers because of its "scary" side, the costumes, the decorations and the famous "trick or treat" custom. The lesson that follows is designed for young teens at B1 level. Enjoy! Halloween