Happy Halloween

The 31st of October is commonly referred to as the scariest day of the year.  Growing up in South Africa I never celebrated Halloween.  Somehow the spooky holiday never made it to our country.  It never quite made it to Korea either; however, with the gradual "westernisation" of Korea certain "American" traditions have crept in, namely, Halloween.

Being at a middle school it's safe to assume that my students have already had their introduction to Halloween.  I was proven right in that assumption when I first began teaching because my boys somehow knew a lot more than me about this creepy day.  Therefore, this Halloween I decided to take a different approach.  I quickly ran through the reasoning behind Halloween and what people do in celebration of this day followed by a music video.  

I played "Backstreet's Back" by the Backstreet Boys ~ They are stranded at a haunted house and turn into various monsters... Very Halloween! :)

Since my class focuses predominately on reading, I opted to read a Halloween themed story.  We read through the story once and I explained each line as we went along, I also picked out difficult vocabulary and explained it.   This particular story has an open ending which allows for the students to get creative and write their own ending to the story.  I gave them a few examples of how the story could end and explained that they were at liberty to decide if the story had a happy, sad or horrific ending.

My students' intended to write horrific endings but with their choice of words and over dramatisation I found them to be quite hilarious.

For a more controlled practice I prepared a set of comprehension questions which they were required to answer before they left.

To end the class on a high I hid candy under a few chairs and used the last 2 minutes of the lesson for the "great candy search". It saved me from having to buy a ton of Halloween candy and scored me some points with the kids. :)

Source: http://bogglesworldesl.com/halloween_worksheets.htm