With the arrival of October, important dates such as Halloween also arrive, this tradition that is so popular in the United States, but which is increasingly present in other countries like ours. It is a celebration that takes place on the night of October 31, and is celebrated in various ways: with decoration (pumpkins, bats, cobwebs, skeletons…), costumes, trick or treating, games like biting the apple, etc.

Halloween is a good opportunity to carry out different activities in class to reinforce knowledge of various subjects. Therefore, in this week’s post we bring you ideas to treat Halloween in class in various subjects.

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Why should you take advantage of Halloween in class to do activities?

You may be wondering: why do I have to take advantage of this festivity? That’s why we leave you with some reasons why you should work on Halloween in class:

• Motivates students and increases their interest: Halloween is a holiday that captures the attention of your students, and increases their interest in learning in class. The fact of integrating scary stories, decorations and typical elements of this festivity makes the content given in class much more interesting.

• Promotes creativity: Treating the Halloween theme can be a great boost to your students’ creativity, whether it is to devise stories, make crafts… This in turn encourages greater interest and motivation for the specific subject. In addition, it encourages students’ oral and written expression, in a fun way.

• Opportunity to learn about culture: Halloween is a holiday with a long history, and with an origin that is culturally relevant. Therefore, discussing the theme of Halloween in class is also an opportunity to learn about culture and carry out activities that revolve around it.

• Fun in class: If stimulating activities related to the Halloween theme are introduced in class, a more positive environment of fun and motivation is generated that promotes greater student learning.

Language and Literature

In both primary and secondary Language and Literature classes, there are many ways in which you can deal with the Halloween theme to carry out a different activity in class.

• An ideal activity for boys and girls of various primary levels is writing Halloween stories and poems. To do this, it is important that you first read (at home or in class) several stories and poems set on Halloween, so that they serve as inspiration and reference. Then, you can encourage your students to write Halloween stories or poems individually or in groups. It will be important that they know how to introduce typical elements and characters of this holiday, and that the stories have a scary component so characteristic of Halloween.

In addition, you can easily evaluate this type of activities, since you can create a column in your Additio App notebook, in which you will introduce the results of these stories and poems. Additionally, with the functionality of Magic Box, you will have a very easy time evaluating groups of students who have written these stories together.

• In secondary school, an activity for Language and Literature adapted to the level of your students is creating a horror podcast. 

First of all, divide your students into work groups, so that with this activity you will promote teamwork and a more cooperative environment. Then, give each group a base topic to create a podcast based on it. They will have to think about the script, record the podcast and edit it. This will help them improve their oral expression, making it an ideal activity to evaluate linguistic communication competence.

History and social sciences

The History and Social Sciences subjects will allow you and your class to explore all the history that Halloween encompasses, or discover how it is experienced in different cultures and countries.

• Infographic on the origins and history of Halloween: Encourage your students to use digital tools to create an infographic about the origins and history of Halloween.

To carry out this activity well, they will have to carry out research work, but they will also have to be able to synthesize all the information and be able to transmit it in the most visual way possible.

You can propose this activity for them to do individually or in groups, and they will surely find it very interesting to discover where this festivity so well known today comes from.

• Study of other cultures: An activity that is sure to be of great interest and that will motivate your students is to investigate how festivities similar to Halloween are celebrated in other cultures and other countries.

You can group your class into work groups so that each group studies a different holiday, such as the Day of the Dead in Mexico, All Souls’ Day in Haiti, Devil’s Night in England or Castanyada in Catalonia, among other festivities.

Your students should ask themselves several questions: What do these festivities consist of? What are their origins? How are they different from Halloween? What traditions do they entail?, among others.

You choose which presentation format they should use, but a good idea may be to set the presentation on each of the festivities being studied. Be that as it may, don’t forget that with Additio App you can evaluate your students, even using the free plan (Additio Starter).

Languages

Whether in Spanish, French, or any other language class taught at school, Halloween is the ideal theme to generate interactive and fun activities that are sure to motivate students.

• Quiz about Halloween: You can create an activity to practice the vocabulary related to this holiday. Additio App’s quiz functionality will help you create an interactive activity that will reflect the evaluations directly in your evaluation notebook.

• Class setting role-play for Halloween: encourage your students to decorate the Halloween class as if it were their house, so that they will have to put themselves in the role of various characters (parents, children, grandparents, neighbors…) to decorate the class correctly, using the corresponding language . You’ll have to order certain decorations (pumpkins, bats, spider webs), plan the party, and you can even recreate Halloween night with trick-or-treating!

How are you going to celebrate Halloween in class?

If you are going to celebrate Halloween in class, stop by our social networks and tell us how you are going to do it in your subject. I’m sure you have very original ideas that we can all be inspired by. Here you can find us: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube.

May you have a terrifying Halloween!