Last year Sean and I had a lot of fun doing Halloween parties in our oral English classes. We played games, decorated orange balloons as if they were pumpkins and talked about what costumes we would choose if we went trick-or-treating. This year, in culture class, I am not doing as much as last year mostly because I have all the same students who I celebrated Halloween with last year.

My Tuesday culture class, however, is a week ahead of all my other classes and I needed something extra for them today. I ended up doing an advanced Halloween lesson which was pretty fun. First they played a game which tested their knowledge of Western holidays in general and then we talked specifically about Halloween since it is coming up soon.

I showed a powerpoint with some more advanced vocabulary like: goblin, vampire, ghoul, coffin, cauldron, zombie, alien, werewolf, Frankenstein, mummy, monster, wizard etc. The powerpoint also had some pictures of my past costumes and jack-o-lanterns. Then we played Taboo with the new words to review them (one person describes the word to the class without saying the word and the class has to guess).

The last game was something I had never tried before in class - a crossword puzzle. I never used them because there is not much speaking involved and in the past I taught oral English. Since it was a culture class, I figured a crossword puzzle was ok and to my surprise it went great! I gave them a really tough one and they worked on it in pairs for 30 minutes straight! Nobody was even packing up when the bell rang which made me happy. I told them that if anybody could bring me back a finished one the following week I would give them a Halloween surprise . . .

You can give it a try yourself if you want. There is an advanced one (called the "ultimate puzzle") which I gave to my students and an easy one if you have lower level or younger students (click "Halloween crossword for higher levels"). I love Halloween =)

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