Lesson Planning: Halloween

This lesson was prepared for a 6th grade class at a beginner level.


The thing I love most about working with these 10 to 12 year old kids, is that they have only been taking English for about a year and still I could carry out the lesson almost entirely in English. I'm still amazed at how quickly younger children are able to comprehend a foreign language!


This lesson was divided into two activities, with two different sets of vocab. The first was a worksheet I copied from another teacher, so unfortunately I can't post it here :-\ buuuuuut, it's pretty basic so I'll just give you the details.


it is basically a kid-crossword puzzle. There are 12 pictures and the children have to write the names of each picture in the corresponding blanks. The words were: Sweets (you know, the British word for candy), cauldron, spider, cat, pumpkin, ghost, star, witch, fire, web, bat, and skeleton. First we just looked at the pictures on the overhead and learned the vocabulary. I wrote all the words on the board as they answered. Then I turned the overhead off, but left the vocab words up and handed out the worksheet for them to fill in. They were given between 5 and 10 minutes to work together and fill it out. At the end, their answers revealed the hidden answer: Trick or treat!


After this we did what I like to call an interactive story. I wrote a simple ghost story for them that focused on six words: haunted, midnight, scary, spooky, ghost and wind/windy, and each word is assigned as sound (and yes, I named the main character after my brother...). Before reading the story we went through each word. I wrote them on the board and had them give me the German word for each. Then as a class we practiced our different noises for each word (before telling them which word they went with). Then I divided the class into 6 groups and assigned them each a word and told them what noise they got to make. (haunted: tapping on the desk, midnight: a single clap, scary: Ahh! *but you have to be sure to tell them only to do it quietly*, spooky: Ooooo, ghost: Boo!, and wind/windy: shhhhhh). then I read through the story with them making their different sounds.

I've done this lesson 3 or 4 times this week, and in some of the classes it didn't take the whole period, so an easy solution is to do the story again, but reassign the words.


They really seemed to get into the story part, and I think it is good because it keeps them focused while you read and they have practice listening to hear their word! good times. I will definitely do the interactive story thing again, it is easily adapted to any theme!

I don't have many older kids this week, but for a "fun" halloween lesson for them, I've just been filling out a Halloween madlib as a class. Simple and fun!