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Halloween

Materials

• Scary Stories
• Halloween Vocab in Russian
• Story Prompts

This is a pretty simple Halloween lesson that can easily be expanded or fit into another lesson. Kids and adults seem to love this one, especially in countries where they don't have Halloween. Plus kids love talking about monsters! I should also note that the scary stories have been sanitized for eighth-graders. And shortened for their attention spans. These are pretty old stories that you can find on the Internet or in most collections of short stories so you can put the sex back in them if you want. or lengthen them for more advanced students.

Vocabulary

First, hopefully you have a big board cause this lesson is fun when you can keep all the vocab up. I like to put a scary picture in the center and then do columns around it to elicit vocab. Something like this:
I usually get a lot of monsters and scary actions, but fewer sounds, places, or creepy things. Hence the alignment. Then I ask the students what Halloween is. Obviously the response will depend on whether or not you live in a country that celebrates Halloween or not. Kids tend to say, "It's a holiday." So I prompt them by asking what we to celebrate it. I put their answers in the "Traditions" column. If they run out of ideas or don't know I put up:

• Wear costumes
• Trick or treat
• Get candy
• Scare people
• Carve pumpkins

and keep up a running dialogue, as they mention things or I write them down, explaining trick or treat or why we carve pumpkins and so on. You can add your own traditions too.

Once you run out of traditions, I usually seque by either eliciting or giving some history or Halloween. For younger students (or more passive students) I say something like "Halloween is the day when monsters and ghosts run free on the street...Now let's name some monsters." For older or more advanced/active students I might talk about the history of Halloween (this page has a good brief history). I might also discuss whether there are similar holidays in their culture/religion, either days where we scare or trick people or days where we remember the dead. Students can also introduce these topics themselves, and it can be very interesting.

Then I ask students to list types of monsters. You might also add to this list if they run out of ideas. I have some Halloween Vocab with Russian translations up. If students start listing movie killers like Freddy Kruger, Jason, the Scream guy, I usually put up Psychopath or killer and tell them that basically all those guys are psychopaths. otherwise they can go for hours. If they mention something I don't know, I try to get them to explain what that thing looks like or does, or to classify it as a vampire, witch, zombie, etc... For example Baba Yaga (from Russian culture) is basically a witch. Watch out for kids mentioning other kids as monsters--I usually say they're all monsters to me.

After I get a good list of monsters, I ask them what those monsters do, or what they look like, and add things to "scary actions" and "creepy things" respectively. We then go over sounds--and this can be fun making the noises like cackling, screaming, howling, groaning. Finally we brainstorm scary places.

Another way to brainstorm or something to do after brainstorming is to get kids to act out monsters or scary actions and have the rest of the class guess. Vocab can also be elicited using relative clauses, like "A zombie is a monster which...." (Thanks to Boggle's World for that idea). You can even teach articles and generalizations without articles: Goblins are small. The goblin in the basement is green and scaly."

Scary Stories

Now hand out the Scary Stories. Have a student read them aloud and check comprehension after each story. Ask if the stories are real or not, and if they are scary. With advanced students I might explain that these stories are urban legends. At this point, you can ask students to tell you traditional ghost stories or to summarize their favorite horror movies. But that can also degenerate quickly into chaos or into speaking in their native language. Or some classes don't really know any stories. At this point I might also ask if anyone believes in ghosts or has every seen a ghost/knows a "true" ghost story.

Chain Story

Finally, I tell students we are going to tell a scary chain story. Each student will add one sentence to the story. You can use these prompts or use your own. For chain stories, you have to decide to insert yourself or not. I sometimes invoke executive privilige to butt in if one student isn't really into it and tries to end the story early. On the other hand, if few students enjoy it I might try to bring it to a quick end.

For homework I have them write a scary story or write about the daily life of a monster. ie "Dracula gets up at 10pm every night and eats raw bloody meat for breakfast. Then he flies to a village and drinks blood. After that, he turns into a bat and flies over the mountains..."

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