Halloween in the TEFL classroom!
The history of Halloween
We’ve all seen the pumpkins and the spooky decorations in the shops since early September, but what really is the significance of Halloween? The origins of Halloween date back to over 2000 years ago as part of the Celtic festival of Samhain. New Year was celebrated by the Cetls on the 1st November, this marked the end of the summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark and cold winter nights. They believed that on the night before the New Year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead were blurred. On this night, the Celts believed the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. People would wear costumes and light fires in an attempt to ward off the ghosts, and so began Halloween.
Nowadays, Halloween is a night which involves activities which include trick-or-treating, apple bobbing, carving pumpkins, eating sweets and wearing scary costumes. A lot of the UK celebrates Halloween, hosting parties, dressing up or going trick-or-treating.
Halloween in a TEFL classroom
Halloween is the perfect time to incorporate some fun and engaging games into the TEFL classroom whilst maybe filling a few cultural gaps. You can find some great resources online to aid in creating a fun and exciting Halloween EFL lesson, like the lesson plan found here. Teachers can start a conversation by asking their students what they know about Halloween and perhaps share some of their own experiences celebrating it. This might be a good way for the teacher to connect with the students. Alongside this, there are many games and activities that can be incorporated into a lesson about Halloween. Here are a few interesting ideas:
“I went into a haunted house and I saw…” - ask students to go round in a circle and one at a time add on a thing/item. For example, the first student would say “I went into a haunted house and I saw a pumpkin”, the second student would follow and say “I went into a haunted house and I saw a pumpkin and a ghost”. The game continues until each student has a turn, or until you run out of ideas.
Trick or treat - fill a bag/bowl with pieces of paper with either a ‘trick’ or a ‘treat’ on each one. Tricks could be ‘jump on one foot for 10 seconds’, ‘rub your head and your tummy at the same time’, ‘say the alphabet backwards’ etc. Treats could be either Halloween stickers/decorations or sweets if these are allowed to be given out. Continue until each student has a turn, or all the pieces of paper have been used.
Halloween word finder - choose a Halloween related word (Halloween, haunted, enchanted, gravestone) and ask students to find as many words as they can using the letters on the chosen word. Give students a time limit (60 seconds, 3 minutes) to find as many answers as they can. You can choose to have a winner for the game; the student/team with the most answers wins a treat.
What am I? Spooky edition - create cards which contain one spooky character per card. These could include a ghost, a witch, a pumpkin, a black cat, Frankenstein, a cauldron, a skeleton etc). Either in smaller groups, pairs or as a whole class, give one student a card and ask them to describe to their group what is on the card, without using the actual word. You can add a time limit to make it harder (30 seconds, 1 minute). Whoever guesses correctly wins a point and the person with the most points wins.
There are a wide variety of resources available online to find the perfect Halloween games for students of all ages and abilities. Some of our favourites include those found here and here.
