Halloween, like any other special occasion, is a great opportunity to break off from the routine and introduce your students to some interesting vocabulary and traditions connected with Halloween. But not only that! Today we have a few ideas on what you can do for your Halloween lessons if your students are at higher levels and really, really bored of all the pumpkin talk!

Vocabulary

Pumpkins, skeletons, werewolves and witches – this is the standard Halloween vocabulary. But what if your students already know all these words and are a bit tired of the colour orange? Halloween is also a great opportunity to introduce vocabulary connected with:

• scary things and phobias
• being afraid (idioms and phrasal verbs)
• crime
• passing away (idioms and phrasal verbs)

Food

If you do, however, want to stay on the topic of pumpkins, a great idea could be to plan your lesson around some tasty dishes. Make it into a project, and ask your students to think of:

• dishes that could be made with pumpkins
• ideas for orange meals that don’t have pumpkins in them
• Halloween-themed menu for a restaurant

And the added bonus is that you can practise imperative and vocabulary connected with recipes.

Traditions

There are many Halloween traditions that are popular all over the world. But maybe there’s something more you could do with them rather than just listing them off? How about asking your students to:

• create a step-by-step instructions manual on how to make a jack-o-lantern
• write down rules for effective trick-or-treating
• do research on Halloween traditions around the world

Controversy

Like with every holiday, there’s a bit of controversy connected with Halloween. Talk about it with your students:

• Trick or treating – we all know what it’s about. But can your students talk about some dangers of going trick-or-treating?
• Wearing costumes is the most popular Halloween tradition, but are all the costumes suitable for everyone? And what might be wrong with wearing some of the costumes?
• Visiting graveyards at midnight on Halloween as a fun activity – is it really OK?
• Halloween vs religion – this might be a tricky one, so make sure your students are OK with discussing this topic.

Discussion

And, your Halloween lesson discussions don’t have to be about Halloween at all. It could be a great (and an unusual) opportunity to talk about:

• death
• famous crime cases
• the paranormal
• horror films

Hope you and your students enjoy your just-a-bit-more-unusual Halloween lessons.