Teach ESL to Kids

This is the Halloween lesson plan that I will be using with my kids.

Teaching a holiday themed lesson to ESL children is slightly different than teaching to native English speakers. Native English speakers will already be familiar with the vocabulary words, so a teacher would want to create a lesson plan for that day only. ESL students do not know the vocabulary and so a different approach is required. I find it best to do your main holiday lesson plan a few weeks before the holiday. This introduces the vocabulary. Then throughout the month, you can reinforce the vocabulary using the daily lesson plan.

FREE Halloween Lesson Plan

1. Hello Song. Do your hello song as you normally would.

2. Read the book Go Away Big Green Monster.This is a great book for any time of the year, but it lends itself especially well to Halloween. If you're not familiar with the book, it starts out by adding a new facial feature on each page (e.g. The big green monster has big yellow eyes.). Then, once the moster is fully built, you have the kids tell each feature to go away (e.g. Go away big yellow eyes!). At the end of the book, they tell the whole monster to go away. This is a particularly great book to use in the ESL classroom as it:

*uses VERY easy English
*offers a great opportunity for the teacher to read it very dramatically to gain the kids' interest
*reviews colors and parts of the face
*introduces a somewhat scary concept in a cutesy non-scary way
*gives the children a way to combat their fear

3. Introduce the Halloween Vocabulary. If your school does not provide flashcards for this vocabulary, print them out at mes-english.com.

4. Using the Halloween vocabulary, play the ghost game. This is a good game for playing with new vocabulary because the kids don't have to already know the vocabulary. If they don't know a word, the teacher can say it and they can repeat it.

5. Singing and Dancing. For the month of October, please try to use the songs "10 Little Pumpkins" (sung to the tune of 10 Little Indians and "Go Away Big Green Monster" (this can be found on the Super Simple Songs CD. The Super Simple Songs CDs are a must-have for any ESL classroom.

6. Smile Time

Love,
Shannon Sensei