Happy Halloween Activities for ALL Grade Levels:)

ELL Teacher Pros Newsletter                                  October 2015 Halloween will be on every student’s mind this month; however, teachers can use this excitement to deliver fun academic activities that will lead to memorable experiences for their students!  (Remember that some religious groups may be  opposed to Halloween so some adjustments will be called for in some of the lessons.) How does one proceed here?  Well some background on the Halloween is necessary.  HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN – This site provides its ancient history, appearance in US, growth of candy treats, just to name a few.  The videos are short and to the point so they can be shown in classroom with ease.  Since this a general description of the holiday, teachers at each level will need to decide videos are appropriate for their students.   Below are some ideas for lesson plans for all students including English language learners. High School The New York Times learning log offers some incredibly innovative instructional activities for older students.  One sample suggestion that is quite creative is to have students explore the horror genre in film and literature.  Ideally, this might be approached in small groups with defined roles.  This approach brings in the English language learner or others with special needs since support is built into all interactions. Another activity might be to have students explore fears and phobias in an essay.  This lesson would easily bring in internet skills as students identify their fears and then describe them including here how accurate the fears are in describing themselves. Middle School Bright Hub Education is a site with great ideas for middle school students for this holiday.  Have them read The Tell Tale Heart.  Then have them identify all the vocabulary words that they find scary and note them on index cards for them later to use in writing their own skits using teacher starter sentences.  There are other ideas here also that teachers and students would enjoy. Teachers might also have students create masks of the scary characters the students created in their group horror stories. ESL/ELLs (at any grade level) This holiday may be new for them so introducing them to the holiday and all the activities that come with it is well worth the time (and will probably benefit others in the class as well).  ESL LIBRARY offers many fun (building language and content development while having fun). For fun and as a great opener, try Michael Jackson’s song THRILLER.  The lyrics are also available.  Print out copies so that ELLs can fully benefit from the video. Well, we hope you find some great ideas from these sites and have a fabulous Halloween! Denise, Marnie, and Cheryl ELL TEACHER PROS Please don’t forget to follow us on TWITTER (@ell_teacherpros  3,682 followers), Pinterest (dmcyberteacher 4,369 followers), Facebook (ELL Teacher Pros)