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Dear Reader,

Raise your hand if you're also currently scrambling for Halloween activities that are:

✔️ a little fun, because those kids are starting to feel *tired*

✔️ ready-made, because AI is okay and all, but who has the time to reinvent the wheel?

✔️ suitable for your students' levels, because pre-teaching 37 words to watch a 2-minute video just sounds like bad economics

✔️ new, because you've done the same thing over and over again

❌ non-creepy looking (aside from the intrinsic level of creepiness that Halloween brings)?¹

Well, you might be happy to know: I've done all this work for you, so this email is the perfect place to be today.

Plus, even if I wanted to avoid the Halloween bandwagon, I don't think I could: unbeknownst to me, it appears as if I have moved into a pretty Halloween-obsessed neighbourhood.

There's a whole neighbourhood Halloween festival here, featuring trick or treating, a costume competition and - get this - a whole spooky music performance on a bike carrying a platform with musicians on, and the bike motion powers the instruments. There also seems to be an unspoken spooky decoration competition, because will you take a look at this:

Eery, right? So, although I am far too fainthearted to be a true Halloween purist, let the peer pressure pressure me into partaking, particularly by directing all this energy towards the lovely lesson resources I have handpicked for you.

Got your pumpkin spiced latte (or something remarkably more affordable)? Let's get our spooky on 👻

You won't get decision fatigue today

I know there's plenty out there and infinite possibilities, which often creates a paradox: the more options we have, the more time we waste, because we just don't know what to choose. It's called "decision fatigue" and it's exactly what I'm going to help you avoid today by not showing you absolutely everything under the sun but rather handpicking a few good resources.

As you will see, I have divided the activities I have picked for you into four categories: flashcards, games, videos and full lesson plans. For each activity, you will find the approximate CEFR level, so you can choose easily.

Note: in the spirit of inclusion and time-saving, most of the activities are adaptable for a range of levels, starting from A1/ A2. If you see an activity marked as A1/A2 and up, you can likely adapt it for higher levels by introducing a higher level of complexity, such as: giving less time, not pre-teaching anything, asking learners to justify their answers orally, making it into a competition with a time limit or using it as an extra activity for fast finishers.

1. Flashcards

Halloween carries with it lots and lots of vocabulary and key concepts: one of the best ways to review these, or even teach them from scratch, are flashcards. Have a look at the following:

• ​Halloween flashcards by the British Council: printable and cute, good for levels A1 and up
• ​Halloween flashcards by Cambridge English: lovely graphics and some slightly higher level vocabulary that would work from A2+/B1.
• ​Halloween Quizlet flashcards: 27 items of vocabulary with definitions and pictures if you prefer the digital route, perfect for A2 and up

2. Games

From sit down, quieter games, to shove-all-the-desks-to-the-side-of-the-classroom active games, here is my selection if you fancy injecting a bit of fun into your lesson and practising different skills and systems:

• ​Matching game: learners match the word to the correct picture, thus revising key vocab. Added plus: they hear the pronunciation of each word. You can split learners into teams and they shout their answers from their desks (the quickest to get the right answer wins) or, if you're feeling brave, do this as a relay game and see which team wins! Good for levels A2 and up.
• ​Spelling game: learners see pictures of Halloween concepts and blast the balloons carrying the letters that spell the word. Good fun to review key vocab for levels A1 and up.
• ​Halloween Bingo: you play this exactly as you would play bingo at Christmas, but with pictures instead of numbers. Suitable for levels A2 and up.
• ​Word search: maybe you've already had your fun in the lesson and want to quiet things down, or maybe you want to kick the excitement up a notch and do this as part of a Halloween treasure hunt; whatever your goal, a good old word search, suitable for levels A1 and up, may be exactly what you need.
• Total Physical Response game: move the desks around so that you have a good amount of free space. Students line up on side of the room, then walk to the other side of the room based on your Halloween-themed instructions, such as:
  • roll like a pumpkin
  • float like a ghost
  • stomp like a monster
  • tiptoe like a witch
  • run like a rat
  • stomp like a Frankenstein monster

3. Videos

I know, I know: putting the class in front of a Halloween movie and watching the time go by is very, very tempting. But you don't need me for that. What I can help you with, however, is sourcing a few short videos that are age- and level- appropriate for your lessons:

• ​What is Halloween? Clear video explainer that would work easily with B1 levels and up, but even A2 provided you pre-teach some key words (e.g. carving).
• ​Trick or Treat? A Brief History of Halloween Traditions by the BBC. This can make for a lovely lesson on the history behind the things we do at Halloween. The good folks at the British Council have turned this into a whole lesson plan, which I reckon would be good for levels B1 and up.
• ​Bet You Didn't Know: Halloween: this slightly more difficult video in American English would work well with a simple task like: which things did you know? Which things didn't you know? Suitable for B1 and up.
• ​A Halloween Showdown - Friends: I am given to understand that 90s TV shows are making a comeback among teenagers: whether that's true or not, TV shows include plenty of Halloween specials, which can serve as powerful motivators. This is one of the best known, from the show Friends (note: if you haven't watched it, do. It's still pretty funny). The video is helpfully divided into sections, so you can play each section and ask learners to make notes and compare in pairs, then start the following section, in a dictogloss style. With a bit of scaffolding, you could play this with B1/B2 students and up.

4. Full lesson plans

And now for the grand finale: if you just want a ready-made lesson plan (I've been there), here are some I have picked out for you.

• ​What should we do on Halloween? A full lesson plan with vocab, speaking, reading, grammar, listening, a game... you name it! You could get a whole week's worth of content from this lesson plan alone. Freely downloadable and suitable for A2.
• ​Halloween traditions, featuring unusual Halloween traditions (speaking of which: if you want 5 alternative ways to cover Halloween, I wrote about them in a past newsletter). Suitable for levels B1 and up.
• ​Halloween lesson plan for B2/C1 levels, if you feel like pushing your students (or some of your students) with slightly more advanced materials.

And that brings me to the end of this spooky Sunday newsletter! Which of these materials would you like to use? I'd love to know.

But in the meanwhile: have a lovely Sunday, and a happy Halloween next week.

Take care, dear teacher ✨

¹ I can't be the only one growing increasingly tired of AI-generated graphics, including those featured in lesson plans. Research shows I'm not, but I do worry about turning too intolerant of innovation. AI-generated images all look the same to me and something in my brain doesn't allow me to fully process the information because it gets busy parsing the design, which invariably includes something a little creepy. I can definitely see some of the benefits of AI, especially in terms of saving time on manual and admin tasks, but I have lots of worries, too - cognitive offloading, kids growing up with it not being able to question it, the job AI-pocalypse, environmental impacts, rogue AI agents infiltrating companies' systems... I could go on, but for now, I'm just going to revel in the graphic beauty of older resources: I'll take 1990s WordArt over the umpteenth AI-generated lesson any day. On the other hand, though, in my quest not to turn into "woman yelling at clouds" (you know the meme) as I age, I hope I manage to not get to the following level of intolerance?

This made me chuckle and also discover these guys, Black Jake and the Carnies are apparently a "punk/bluegrass" band, which I didn't even know was a thing!

P.S.: My weekly suggestion for things to listen to/watch/read to improve your English while relaxing: if you're trying to go on a health kick right now, thus preparing your stomach for the Christmas season, why not do it in English and with a guy who's not going to make you want to bang your head against a wall? Liam here pops up on my feed fairly often and I've learned quite a bit about nutrition from him, in English. Did I put it all into practice? Erm, alright... perhaps you have a next question?

P.P.S.: I'm loving all the vocabulary I'm learning that you're learning via this newsletter. If you learned something today that you don't want to forget, make sure to add it here. I try to reply to all posts!

✨Cool things I heard this week

My students asked me something this week that I had just learned in one of your courses. That was so cool that I could give them the answer they wanted!

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