Link Things

Halloween is approaching, and in EFL classrooms, it has long been recognized as an essential occasion to introduce some cultural elements of English-speaking countries to learners. Teachers are always creative in designing their lesson plans and setting the atmosphere in the classroom. Throughout my learning experience, I have got great opportunities to join various Halloween activities, ranging from language-focused (such as vocabulary puzzles) to more content-based activities (such as watching videos about the history of Halloween). This blog will introduce to you some websites where you can easily find free and easy-to-use Halloween activities for your EFL classes.

1. ESL Video (https://www.eslvideo.com/)

This is an excellent site if you’re into using some videos for your class. You just need to key in the word “Halloween” in the search bar, and there are a lot of videos with relevant activities for you. Of course, you can use these activities immediately or modify them to fit your class’s interests and objectives.

Below are two resources that I have found on ESL video. The first one is an extract from the famous series “Friends” followed by some vocabulary and listening comprehension questions. You can access the material here.

For less casual content, the video below is from National Geographic about the History of Halloween. You can find the notes on vocabulary and general questions with the video. The quiz on the site focuses on listening skills and grammar knowledge. The video is as below and you can access the activity here.

2. Liveworksheet (https://www.liveworksheets.com/)

You may have heard about this site once or twice if you have followed my blog for a long time. This is a website for online interactive worksheets. As its name suggests, you can easily let your students do activities on this site without having to print out the papers. Again, key in the word “Halloween” and you can find tons of materials. You can either choose to view “Most popular first” or “Newest first”.

However, as these worksheets are already designed by other teachers and material developers, you are not allowed to duplicate and edit them. Also, some are permitted for download, but some are only available. This is extremely helpful if you are teaching online and want to have your students do some worksheet activities. If you are unsure how to use this one, please refer to my previous blog.

3. Canva (https://www.canva.com/)

If you have heard of Canva, don’t be surprised that this free design tool can give you various teaching activities. Of course, as they are not explicitly developed for educational purposes, you must go through more steps than in the two previous sites. To design your worksheet, you have to first create a new design. For our teaching purposes, you need to choose “Worksheet” or “A4 Document”. You can resize them later, but at the moment, these sizes give you the right path for the available teaching materials.

Once you have got your blank space, on the “template” section, key in “Halloween” for relevant content. Now, you only need to scroll down to view many available resources and choose the right one for your class.

I found some worksheets usable for my YLE, Teen and IELTS classes. You will probably find your own easily. 

What I like about Canva is that we can edit our worksheets. Since it is a design tool, you can do everything with your templates. While on liveworksheet, you can only use the materials without being able to edit or download them most of the time, Canva allows you to re-design, add your own ideas, change the colour, and so much more.

Hopefully, my suggestions can give you some reliable ideas for your coming Halloween-themed classes. To be honest, the title is only for catching attention and you can go back to these sites anytime, maybe for Christmas classes later. Enjoy!