Teaching Halloween Vocabulary to ESL Students

Today is October 31st and that means ESL teachers across the globe are busy explaining Halloween to their students. It’s a great opportunity to have fun in the classroom and I advice you to do whatever you school or university is happy with you doing. Carve pumpkins, give out candy, watch movies… whatever they’ll let you do, do it! This is a fun day, like Christmas, and nothing gets students learning like fun.

For me, I have some pretty tight constraints in as far as what I can do in the class, so I keep my lessons a bit more overtly educational. Still, I like to blend in a little music and some visuals, and I always carve a couple of pumpkins beforehand to decorate the room. My students here in rural China have never seen anything like that before up close and it blows their minds!

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I like to start off a lesson like this by simply asking them, “What do you know about ______?” Then I’ll let them tell me what they’ve heard about Halloween. Chinese students tend to know a lot more about this holiday than, say, Christmas. Still, I take this chance to board some vocabulary and correct any misconceptions they may have.

After that, I go through this Halloween vocabulary PPT: