History.com: Halloween

Details

Activity Description

Use the Example Web site's Halloween pages to teach students about the history of Halloween.

Preparation

1. Make sure that the site is not blocked at your school.
2. Download the PDF lesson handout above. Print it and make copies for your students.
3. Go through the lesson activities yourself before using them with students to predict difficulties and to have answers prepared.
4. Photocopy all needed handouts.

How-To

1. Have students complete the first prediction activity by seeing what they do and do not already know about Halloween. They will read each sentence and mark a T for true and F for false.
2. In a computer lab, students can open the link with the article about the history of Halloween and read the article. You can print out the article and make copies for students if you do not have computers.
3. During and after reading the article, students check their predictions for the T/F activity and change any false sentences to make them true. Students can then check their work with a classmate, and/or with the whole class.
4. Next, students do the second exercise, a vocabulary-building activity, by looking up and writing definitions of words in the article and writing the parts of speech.
5. For the next lesson activity, open the link for the video "Primal Fear: Controlling Fear" (you can simply click on the link in the PDF file rather than type in the URL in your browser). Students will listen to the video and take notes in the note-taking form.
6. Last, the site includes two interactive exercises, which you could assign to students for fun or simply share with them. The first, Hidden Spirits: Paranormal Investigation Halloween Game is a game in which users play the role of "paranormal data collector" to help solve the haunted mysteries of the Royal Mangnall Hotel. The game provides good reading and recall practice for literacy students. The second interactive on the site is the page Patterns for Pumpkin Carving , with photos of simple (skull pattern) to extremely intricate (Statue of Liberty pattern), for which PDF patterns can be downloaded and used for pumpkin carving. Perhaps students may enjoy a class jack-o-lantern design contest. You can finish up a Halloween lesson with the BBC's 7-question quiz, to find out if students can remember what they learned about this unique holiday.

Teacher Tips

• The language level of articles and videos is advanced. Students may need instruction on key vocabulary before using the site's resources.
• Some videos on the site have ads, so cue up the video ahead of time and press pause on the player after the ad has played so that students do not have to view it, if you are using the video viewing as a whole-class activity. You can fast forward and rewind the video clip by dragging on the play toolbar.
• Other articles about Halloween on the site include the following: History of the Jack O' Lantern, Halloween Around The World, Famous ghosts in American History, Pumpkin Facts, and History of Ghost Stories.
• There are more than 36 Halloween-related videos, which are short enough (30 seconds to 3 minutes) to introduce the topic or use as focused listening exercises, including Haunted History of Halloween, Halloween's Origins, All About the Pumpkin, Halloween: Primal Fear - Fear and the Brain, Halloween Traditions (Candy Corn), and Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trial.

More Ways

You can replicate the lesson activities about Halloween with any of the numerous topics on the site: Holidays, Women's History, Black History, Ancient History, Science and Technology, Places, Events, Native American History, United States Presidents, Colonial America, Civil War, Vietnam War, World War II, People, Eras and Decades, Wars and Military, Conflicts, and the U.S. States. Activities you create around the articles, videos, and infographics can include:

• listening and note-taking
• listening cloze
• listening/dictation
• reading comprehension and vocabulary learning
• summary writing

There are also many games, quizzes, puzzles, and interactives. For ESL, see the quizzes on Citizenship and U.S. history.

Program Areas

• ESL: English as a Second Language

Levels

• Advanced

Documents

• HalloweenActivities.pdf - Information worksheet and writing prompts

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