At the end of October and the beginning of November, people around the world celebrate Halloween, All Saints Day, All Souls’ Day, and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). During these holidays, people honor and remember the dead. During Halloween, adolescents and teens dress up as scary creatures. We can engage our learners this season by teaching English with spooky themes, such as zombies, monsters, vampires, hauntings, and ghosts. Below are some resources to get you started with introducing these themes to your teens. For lesson ideas and activities, check out our webinar recording, Halloween for Teens.
To learn more about integrating technology to support English language learners, attend our TESOL webinars.
Resources
- Research the history of hauntings. Find audio recordings and short texts about haunted places on the Moonlit Roads site.
- Shadowlands, Dead Files, and Ghost Hunters are great resources to find out about haunted places and their histories. You will also find lesson ideas, videos, and short readings.
- Your students will enjoy reading this Zombie graphic novel, which is free to download and read. Find Common Core related activities to go along with this novel.
- Then have your learners use this graphic novel and comic maker on the Goosebumps website to create their own spooky comics.
- Have your students plan for a zombie apocalypse. Find lesson plans and PowerPoint slides here and on Teach Them English.
- Students can play the Urgent Evoke zombie game online where they have to solve problems like famine and viral outbreaks. Find lesson plans and resources for educators when you sign up for the game.
- Find a zombie-related curriculum, with videos and lesson ideas along with math and science activities at STEM Hollywood lesson plans.
- Show students this History of Halloween Costumes infographic and have a discussion about what kind of costumes they would wear and how modern costumes are different than ones in the past.
- Students can create their own costumes. Have them learn science and the grammar of following instructions by having them follow recipes to make blood or slime.
- Find horror-related writing prompts here.
