Spook-tacular classroom activities for a fang-tastic Halloween

As the spooky season creeps up on us like a ghost in the night, why not bring a little Halloween magic into the classroom? Whether you’re looking to trick your students into learning with a bit of treat-worthy fun, or you’re brewing up some activities that will make their skills rise from the dead, we’ve got you covered. Don’t be afraid, these activities won’t come back to haunt you—though they might scare up some serious engagement!

Unearth the History of Halloween

photograph by Powell Krueger

Underneath the sweets and scary costumes, Halloween has a rich history dating back to ancient times. Why not turn your classroom into a time-traveling crypt where students explore the haunted roots of this holiday? Split students into groups, each tasked with investigating one aspect of Halloween history—be it the Celtic festival of Samhain, the rise of Halloween in the U.S., or the origin of costumes and jack-o’-lanterns. Have each group create a ghostly news report or boo-tiful visual timeline to present their findings.

For a modern twist, challenge your students to create a short, engaging social media post (photo or video) summarizing their research. Think: 30-second TikTok video or something along those lines. They can use props and costumes to recreate historical scenes or make their own “haunted history” presentations.

A Green and Sustainable Halloween

Even witches and ghosts care about sustainability these days, especially dinosaur ghosts who hate seeing fossil fuels being used so much!

For this activity, challenge your students to think about how they can celebrate Halloween in an eco-friendly way. Start with a discussion on common Halloween practices. Things like costumes, decorations, eating endless amounts of sweets and chocolate and their environmental impact.

Next ask students to brainstorm and design their own “Green Halloween.” They could come up with costume ideas made from recycled materials, eco-friendly party decorations, or suggestions for low-waste treats. Have students present their ideas to the class in a “Green Halloween Fair.” They can even vote on the best ideas, giving out fang-tastic prizes.

Turn this into a creative writing task! Students can create a flyer or social media post advertising their sustainable Halloween ideas, complete with catchy slogans and imagery. This is a great way to practice persuasive language while raising awareness.

Monstrously Mundane: Halloween Characters in Everyday Situations

What happens when your favourite Halloween characters have to deal with the same everyday problems we do? In this imaginative and humorous activity, students will take classic Halloween figures—like vampires, witches, and ghosts—and place them in totally ordinary, un-spooky situations.

Provide students with three images of typical Halloween characters (like a vampire, a witch, and a ghost). Have them brainstorm how these characters would act in an everyday scenario, such as:

  • A vampire at the bank, complaining about the opening hours because they can only visit after dark.
  • A witch at the supermarket, frustrated because they can’t find any eye of newt in the spice aisle.
  • A ghost trying to book a flight online, but struggling because they can’t select a seat, as they no longer exist.

I like to generate these images using AI and ask my students what they think the prompt may have been. Let students, either use the images and characters crated above or ask them to  create their own.

Once students have chosen their characters and scenarios, they can either write a short story or create a dialogue between the characters and other people in the scene. Encourage them to use humour, develop comics and perhaps even act out their scenes for the class.

Reading

If writing isn’t whats on your agenda in spooky season maybe you’re looking to get your students into reading. There are a whole host of readers available for check them out here. For more Reading ideas check out Liz Beer’s article from last halloween

With these spine-tingling ideas, your students will be learning and laughing while they embrace the eerie season. Not only do these activities cover key language skills, but they also let students show off their creativity in frighteningly fun ways. Plus, by sneaking in some lessons on history and sustainability, you’re giving them a more scream-worthy Halloween experience. Don’t forget to check out Pearson Readers for even more boo-rilliant resources to sink your teeth into!

Hair-raisingly good Halloween English Reader activities

Halloween reading activities

Halloween is just around the corner, and it is a wickedly wonderful way to encourage your older teen and adult students to broaden their vocabulary, consolidate their grammar and practice their reading skills by using classic horror or thriller English Readers in class. Pearson has a collection of more than 300 Pearson English Readers which are easy to use and contain lots of extra materials.

Some spook-tacular Halloween selections from the classic English Readers are:

  • The Phantom of the Opera
  • Dracula
  • The Hound of the Baskervilles
  • Dr Faustus
  • Hamlet
  • The Locked Room and other horror stories
  • Misery
  • Tales of Mystery and Imagination
  • The Canterville Ghost and other stories

If you want to use a Reader with your students in class, for Halloween or for any time of the year, here are some ideas to compliment the book.

Word Lists

Every Pearson Reader has a word list at the back of the book that gives a brief definition of the essential vocabulary used. Use these lists to design a ‘treasure hunt’ style game. For example:

Find:

  1. Three animals
  2. Two jobs
  3. Two places for dead people

After students have read the story, you can also play a quiz game where you read out a definition of a word and students buzz in and tell you the answer. Alternatively, another fun revision game is that you say a word and students must come up with a grammatically correct sentence using that word to win. It’s a fun way to practice new vocabulary.

Character Conversations

Once you have started to read the book with your students and the characters have been introduced, you can ask students to imagine that they are some of the characters in the book and to have a conversation with each other. For example, in the story Dracula, the Doctor comes to visit Lucy as she is under the spell of Dracula and is acting strange. A dialogue may look like this:

Student A: You are Dr Seward. Ask questions about how Lucy is feeling.

Student B: You are Lucy’s father, Arthur. Explain how Lucy is feeling.

Conversations can also take place between characters in the form of Instant Messaging, or mobile phone text messages. Students can collaborate on a shared document, such as Google docs, and read and respond in real time to their classmates’ messages. You can also do this via traditional pen and paper messages.

Another conversation practice can be character interviews. Student A is a very famous TV talk show host and invites one of the characters from the book on to their show for an interview. Student B is one of the characters. Students can prepare the questions together before acting out the dialogue.

Radio Plays

Ask your students to recreate the entire story, a chapter or part of the story in the form of a radio play. They not only have to be the characters but they also have to be foley artists. If you have permission from the students and/or parents, you can record them performing! Give students plenty of time to prepare their dialogues, scripts and find the props they need to make the sounds. If students are watching each other, provide some listening activity for the audience to do, such as:

Watch your classmates perform their radio play.

  • What did you like the best?
  • What sound effect was the most realistic?
  • Was their dialogue accurate from the book?
  • What was your favourite line?

Creative Writing

Try to find opportunities in the story to encourage different writing styles. For example, in Dracula, we could set these tasks:

  1. You are Dracula trying to sell your castle. Write a description of it.
  2. You work for the police. You want to tell people about the dangers of vampires. Write a report answering these questions: How will I know if a person is a vampire? What should I do if I see one?
  3. You are Jonathon and you have just spent the first night in Dracula’s castle. You send a text message to your fiancée Mina. Arrived safely. Dracula v. strange. J xx. Reply as Mina and then continue the conversation between them both.
  4. The book publisher wants you to write a 100-word description for the back of the book that will encourage people in the 21st Century to read it – careful, do not reveal the ending of the story!

Personalisation

Many of these Readers are suitable for Halloween because they play on our fears. Some are supernatural, such as vampires or werewolves, but others are more real, such as locked rooms or insects. Personalising questions either before students read the text or after is a great way to either build anticipation or check understanding of the story, and it helps students to use quite specific vocabulary. For example, in the short story The Ash Tree, we can ask our students before they read:

Which of these situations would frighten you most?

A You are walking alone in an open field at night. You see a black shape with two very bright eyes.

B You are driving along a road on a stormy night. Tall trees on each side of the road are moving wildly.

Or in The Barrel of Amontillado before students read:

This story involves a slow death and a barrel of expensive wine. Discuss how the person might die.

and in The Locked Room after the students have read it, we can discuss and speculate what we might do in the same situation:

Imagine you have just been into the locked room for the first time. You saw the clothes move and you heard the steps behind the door. What will you do now? Talk to another student.

Debates

Debate

Debates are great because not only do students practice speaking but they also have to give logical reasons as to why they are defending a particular idea, which is a very useful skill to have. We can choose to have a two-sided debate, such as after reading The Phantom of the Opera, the debate could be:

The mayor of Paris and the Captain of Police wants to tear down the Opera House after the recent scandals, but the locals want to protect the historical and beautiful building.

The class then splits 50/50 and they prepare their ideas and arguments before debating. Alternatively, the debate can be character based with multiple opinions. For example, after reading Faust, the debate could be:

In groups of five, imagine and act out this scene. The characters are:

  • The Pope
  • The army officer
  • The King of Germany
  • The Duke of Vanholt
  • Robin

A world organization thinks that Faustus should receive its top international prize for his services to science. Do you agree? Make short speeches and then have a discussion.

Halloween is the perfect time in the academic year to introduce readers to your class if you have not done so already. The Pearson Readers form part of the ‘Connected English Learning Program’ as it is part of the vast resources available to help your students to learn English through topics they love.

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Creativity

With all of the demands on us as teachers to help our students improve their English we can sometimes lose sight of the fact that language is not the only thing going on in our classrooms.  As important as improving students’ linguistic competences is, we know we are also getting them ready for using that language in the real world.  And take a look around – the world is a pretty chaotic place (VUCA if you will) which can put a strain on the most resilient of us.  Though no one is asking us to be professional psychologists, taking into account some of the principles of the Emotional Intelligence movement is a good idea if we want to help our students become happy, productive and resilient in addition to linguistically proficient members of society.

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For English Teachers it’s time to skill up – and celebrate our success - Ilustration by Tang Yau Hoong

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5 ways you can harness your students’ holiday experiences in class

Ideas for English class for your Secondary students

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Here you can see our latest Pearson Anaya Events sessions!

Here you can see our latest Pearson Anaya Training Events for Secondary Teachers!

Pearson Anaya EventsESO: Next move talk

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