High School - Halloween Ideas

[jellomando]

This is my own Hallowe'en lesson showing how to properly use Korean subtitled South Park episodes in your lessons.

Hallowe'en:

• Native Speaker gives students a pop quiz on Halloween. 10 minutes.
• Native Speaker goes over the pop quiz.  5 minutes.
• Native Speaker demonstrates Hallowe’en by playing South Park Video. 20 minutes.
• Students perform Crossword worksheet.  10 minutes.
• Native Speakers goes over Crossword worksheet. 5 minutes.

Notes:

• I assumed that the kids would have some exposure to Hallowe’en so I expected them to have no problem with the Hallowe’en Questions worksheet; the smart students managed to get a phrase or two for each question (“wear mask and get candy”) but others just looked at me with dumbfounded expressions.
• The smart students know to write down the words that the class brainstorms for Hallowe’en symbols.  Be sure to mention the words used in the crossword activity at this point.
• There’s almost too much work in this lesson so the timing of this class can go wrong if the kids are slow.  I just end the worksheets early instead of skipping South Park.
• Some teachers use South Park episode as filler, but here it works incredibly well since it follows the kids around their town during a Hallowe’en night zombie crisis.
• Eric Cartman is an excellent role model for teaching Racism in Asia since he dressed as Hitler and a KKK member.  This is just an observation for a future lesson and has nothing to do with a lesson on Hallowe’en.

The video is available from pandora.tv.  EP1-7 Pink Eye is the better of the hallowe'en specials (the alternative video is EP3-12 South Park Korns Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery).

The crossword was created from Variety Game’s Crossword Maker.

More information about my lessons can be found here.

[AlexMokpo]

HAHAHAHA, I love that I've got you addicted to using South Park as a means of teaching in class   It really is a great way to keep them interested, teach them something, and provide it in a very AMerican perspective

[lisadream]

I'm sure this would've been more help to you if it was posted last week, but I've made some revisions from the original plan as things always play out alittle differently in the classroom.

Most if not all High School students are familiar with Halloween as it is taught to them every year by their Native English teacher, so I felt it would be appropriate to deviate alittle and share some Halloween "culture" with them.

Purpose: To share a piece of modern Halloween culture with students and teach them new vocabulary.

Materials: Visual aids for Halloween review, Thriller video on youtube and equipment to show video to class, "Thriller By Michael Jackson - A Halloween 'Classic' " handout for students.

Lesson Plan:

Introduction - 5 minutes

Teacher asks students what Holiday is celebrated in Canada and United States at the end of October. Students respond: Halloween.
Teacher briefly reviews Halloween with students: we dress up in costumes, we watch scary movies, children knock on doors and get candy. Teacher explains that today the students are going to watch the most famous Halloween music video in Canada and the United States. Teacher posts visual aids of classic Halloween items (A witch, a jack-o-lantern, skeleton, ghost etc, last image should be a zombie) and asks students to name the items. Teacher tells students the music video has lots of zombies in it.

Lesson- 30 to 40 minutes
Handout "Thriller" lyrics and worksheet to students. Explain the first page and part of the second are the script of the video. The plot begins on the second page. Teacher reads the plot to the students. (My first year students have needed definitions of "tease", "foggy street" and that Vincent Price is an actor who will read the "spoken" part of the song on the first page) Teacher asks students to follow along in their script and plays the video.
This lesson is designed around a shorter version of Thriller than the original, it begins as Michael and his girlfriend are leaving the Theatre. If you stop the video after Vincent Price does his laugh and the credits start it times out at 8 minutes. here's the link: http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=2MviFGVivyk
- once the zombies start dancing, I write the numbers 1 -13 on one side of the board, and the 13 vocabulary words that are highlighted on the first two pages on the other side of the board.
- Teacher reviews the plot of the video again quickly. Explain that the highlighted or circled words on the handout are the answers to the vocabulary quiz on the 3rd page. Tell students they have 5 minutes to put the words in the blank spaces next to their definitions.
- Ask students for answers to the quiz (I give out candy for every answer given, whether it is correct or not, I want to reward the effort). Have the class repeat the answer and give simple examples to help students grasp the new term.

Closing- 5 to 10 minutes
Explain to students that "Thriller" is also a good example of casual spoken English because it uses many contractions and slang words.
- On a scratch board write "Contractions" and give example from the first line of the script "It's only a movie", It's = It is. Ask students to find as many contractions as possible and give out candy for each contraction listed.
- Write "Slang" on the board. Give the example, "You're outta time", outta = out of. Ask students for an other slang words they can find.
(These search and find activities will easily fill out the rest of your class time, and are easy enough that lower level students will feel confident participating).

I'm new to teaching and creating lessons plans so I apologize if the formattig is alittle strange....

[zachmokpo]

I tried showing Thriller in my girls high school but none of them were really into it. Disney was however a hit.

[lisadream]

Really? So far all my classes have loved it, or atleast been pretty impressed with it. I sort of build up how great the video is in the introduction by telling them that this is "The most famous Halloween Music Video" in Canada and the United States they all get pumped.

[zachmokpo]

Hahahaha. Damn. With mine, it has to be TVXQ or Wonder Girls for it to be cool.
I'm glad you had good results with it. Some students laughed at the dancing and at how skinny Micheal Jackson was.

[lisadream]

Haha, yeah well there is always definitely some laughing when the zombies start dancing!

[Brian]

We've made it five posts without bringing up the prison "Thriller"? 
어떻게? 

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o

[lisadream]

Lol, yeah I watched that for the first time today, another friend who heard about my Thriller lesson emailed it to me, it's so great!!!

[mokporandi]

ok after midterms in oct. i just want to let my high school students make halloween crafts to decorate the room, etc. because their brains will be more fried than usual and i wanna do something easy but not just show movies because they're getting movies this week.

i have 1st and 2nd graders (10th and 11th in the u.s.), 16 classes a week, about 30-35 students per class.

so my question is: do you think it's even possible to get high school students interested in doing some kind of craft at all? i know most of the girls will have fun with it but i dunno about the boys. i'm hoping the boys will be interested if they can make scary/gory things...

but what should they make? i have paper, scissors, glue, markers and crayons for the classroom. hopefully enough for everyone to make something. should i get templates online? should i have them draw something? just wing it and let them make whatever they want? should they make halloween masks?

should i try to hang up everyone's craft? that'd be over 500 crafts on the walls! most likely i'd have to put some in the hall...also most likely they will be vandalized...stupid kids...anyway! )

should each class make something that they all pitch in to do? then i'll just have 16 things to hang on the wall? what would it be?

i could make each class make something different so then i don't have tons of the same exact thing.

i'm drawing a blank. any suggestions would be great! thanks! and soon enough - happy halloween! :oD

[lisadream]

Hey Mokporandi,

I'm having a similar debate with myself, although not quite on the same scale as you and I'm at an all girls high school, so they're easier to please than boys. I'm only going to have one day of classes for crafts/decorations (my midterms run tues - fri, so my monday classes are going to do crafts so that they are not ahead of everyone) but am still looking at a few ideas. Here are my thoughts, since you asked for them:

- don't limit yourself to just Halloween, use Autumn for a theme also and then those decorations can stay up through November (in your case, it will give you time to maybe rotate through some of the crafts/decorations all those classes have made)
- DO give them specific crafts/decorations to make, with no structure at all most of them will probably waste most of the class and then throw something together in the last 5 or 10 minutes. You could give them a task, but not specific instructions, like "Create a Jack-o-lantern" and give them the supplies.
- For the students who aren't artistic, I'm thinking of having them make vocabularly cards for Halloween/Autumn words written large in Korean and English, that can be hung around the room next to the decorations (ie. pumpkin, ghost, candy, Autumn, horror movie) or having some quotes prepared (autumn or halloween poems? famous limericks?) for them to write out neatly for display.
- I'm going to put my kids in groups of 8 to share supplies, so I think I'm might assign them a few craft ideas, some vocab cards and a quote or two to write out. It will be the groups challenge to complete all the tasks. This should encourage them to delegate/share and watch their time limit. Then I'll pick at least one thing from each group for display.
- Considering the amount of classes you're going to do this with, I think your poster idea could really work. But getting 30-35 kids to work on one poster could be tricky. Let me know how you do with that!
- definitely look for resources online, it will give you inspiration if anything! maybe if you have a few templates and can let the students choose one of several, they will get more involved because of their concious choice in the matter

Good luck!

[mokporandi]

thanks for the ideas! i'm still trying to figure things out. i got a few ideas from other people on facebook too.

some suggestions were:
-write a halloween story (although i really wanted to incorporate art so i may use this but have them make a halloween comic strip- more drawing, less words...which will be good for my low level students.)
-carve pumpkins with just my english club- definitely gonna try to do this!!! (it's only 10 students)
-halloween masks
-use ghost stories in some way: read them, write them...

my goal is to do something simple and hands-on rather than "brain-on" ya know? it's gonna be after mid-terms so the whole point is for it to be easy and fun.

i'm thinking of doing a different thing with each class - one class make comic stips, one class make masks, one class make jack-o-lanterns or something. then i may just pick the best ones to use for display. is that too...i dunno- i don't want the kids' whose things weren't picked to feel like their thing wasn't good enough.

i think it'd be way too hard for each class to make one big thing...too many people ya know? i guess each group in each class could make one halloween poster and then i could choose one poster from each class to hang up on the walls...hopefully i'd have enough room for 16 posters...

and the posters could have some kind of halloween song or poem in the middle with decor around it- pumpkins, witches, jack-o-lanterns, etc.

the reason i want to make the decor halloween-specific is because i may also try to do a general fall craft later where we make leaves, pumpkins, scarecrows, etc...i may just do that with just my english club and put the stuff up in the room.

[zachmokpo]

This lesson took me two weeks to finish. The first week was a quick glance over of Halloween monsters and famous horror movie villains (Freddy, Jason, Leatherface). The students worked in groups of 3-4 and made a monster on a large sketchpad then proceeded to fill out the handout. The second lesson was used to give students 15 minutes to finish their writeups.

Each group presented their monster to the class and the other groups voted the best four monsters. The best four would win a prize.

[lisadream]

It's that time of year again, here's an edited version of the original handout. Better organized and a few mistakes corrected. Just a reminder that if your students find the vocab quiz too difficult (some of my classes have) go through it as a group activity and then have them search for contractions and slang instead. Happy Halloween!

[bza]

This looks like a fun lesson, I'm going to try it with my extra classes on Thursday and Friday. Since I already did a Halloween lesson involving a run down on the Halloween basics, mentioned the famous monsters, threw on one of the Simpson's Halloween episodes, and then did a quiz on the monsters and the episode I showed.

[uticmmacdonald2003]

This lesson was awesome for my 1st and 2nd grade High School girls....they were totally freaked out by the videos about Freddy and Leatherface! They created some interested Monsters/Villains too!

[uticmmacdonald2003]

oops
INTERESTING

[Scott]

I did this class today.  It went well.  I had a nine tail fox who eats livers, hearts, skin and blood, a vampire princess in a black dress who bites people with her eyeteeth (I learned a new word too!), and a bunny who accidentally ate human flesh (instead of grass) and became a man-eating Muffy.  Too funny! 

Thanks,

[muadib]

my third grade middle schoolers had a really tough time with this one. I feel like this is close to working though, next class I'll try and feed them a few more transition phrases.

[muadib]

I tried to simplify this a little bit. I think next week I'll do the same thing, but with superheroes! I love it when the students get creative, it's hard to get started sometimes but fun to watch them go!

I deleted the "wolfboy" pic cause that guy (twins) actually has a real disorder, he's not a monster!

Thanks OP!