Monday, October 31, 2016

YL Halloween lesson plan (with free worksheets)

It's Halloween! This is one of my favorite festivities of the year and planning lessons for this day usually begins a month prior. I've been meaning to upload these worksheets(yay! you get free worksheets) for about a week now, but the earthquakes here in Italy have pretty much put a dent in my excitement levels.

Here it is.

Broom-Stick Bunny Lesson Plan

The lesson is based on the Looney Tunes episode "Broom-Stick Bunny"(Youtube link - ). The action takes place on Halloween and Bugs is out trick-or-treating as a witch when he stumbles upon Witch Hazel's house who is very busy preparing a potion. We also have a magic mirror that tells Hazel she is the ugliest of all. All round it's a funny little clip only about 8 minutes long.


1. Have a "What day is it today(or tomorrow)?" hangman with your kids. And yes, everyone likes a good hangman game. - great for practicing spelling
2. When they get the question, have them answer and write Halloween on the board, circle it and tell them they have 2 minutes to write as many words as they know about Halloween in pairs/groups. Make sure you monitor and keep track of useful words you might need in the lesson (broom/broomstick, witch, trick-or-treating, costume, spider)
3. Have students come up and write one or two words. Make sure everyone understands the words, if not have the student who wrote the word explain, give a synonym or maybe even use L1.


1. Give The first worksheet and have student do activity 1 in pairs/group.
2. Monitor and make sure they are on track, communicating, solving.
3. If your class is super small, fast or unwilling to communicate, you can do it as a class activity with you as the ring master, but you should first push them to do it amongst themselves.
4. Class feedback. Use the images I've included with the worksheets to make it super clear. Maybe pin them to the board.

First viewing

1. Tell students you will watch the cartoon once. Use your hands to make this clear.
2 Write: "What costume is Bugs Bunny wearing?" Show them the Bugs Bunny image again and ask them if he is wearing a costume there. Say: "In the cartoon, Bugs Bunny is wearing a costume. What costume is it?"
3. Watch the cartoon. Some kids will automatically give you the answer as soon as they see the first scene. Make a shhhhh sign with your hands and ask them to keep looking (again, your hands are indispensable)
4. After the cartoon ends ask a few kids what the costume was or ask them as a class.
5. Extra: ask them what was their costume last year for Halloween and this year for Halloween.
    Extra: write "What was your costume last year for Halloween?" and "What is you costume this year for Halloween?" and have students ask each other in pairs. Change pairs, do it again.

Second viewing

1. Tell students to look at activity 3. Say: "Look at the questions. Read the questions. Do you understand? What is a tarantula? Do you have a pet tarantula?"
2. Say: "Watch the cartoon. After, answer the questions."
3. Watch the cartoon. Some might start writing while watching, that's fine, but if you get some students frantically looking around because they are not writing while their classmates are, stop the cartoon and say: "We answer the questions after." Use you hands to signal an after.
4. When the cartoon is finished, organise the students in pairs or groups. I prefer groups for this stage since more heads are better than one.
5. Monitor. If you see students struggling to remember, you're lucky. You get to watch the cartoon again!
6. When you're fairly sure they have the answers, this sureness coming from monitoring of course, do a class feedback. Maybe write the answers on the board. Your call.


1. Have students turn the worksheet over, if that was your game plan, or give the students the second worksheet.
2. Organize them in pairs or groups and say: "Now, write the cartoon's story. Use only the present simple!"
3. ICQs: Do you work alone or in pairs? Do write something? What?
4. Ask students if they need to watch the video again. Usually you will get a resounding yes.
5. After they've watched again, they are ready to go. Monitoring here is crucial because they will be going everywhere with the verbs, so you need to insist that they stick to the Use only Present Simple rule. Write it in the board if necessary.
6. Help out with vocabulary if necessary.
7. At this point, they might not finish in time for the end of the lesson, so they can take it home as homework.
8. If they do finish:
HOMEWORK: draw a witch (for younger, low level learners), draw a witch and write her story (for younger, higher level learners), write a haunted house story (older YL like tweens and teens).

Click HERE for Broom-Stick Bunny Free Worksheets

And that's it guys!
In case you get this idea, yeah, it does work with adults just the same. I tried it out with two lower level adult classes and it was fine. They had a blast.

Hope you enjoy it.

The Sound Eater

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