It’s October 1st, and for many of us, that means Spooky Season is officially here! Halloween fever only builds the further we get into October, and that’s true in the classroom, too. Since most kids love scary stuff (in my experience, anyway!), October is a great time to engage our ELLs with different vocabulary and many more fun and spooky learning opportunities.

Getting into the Halloween Spirit: Discovering What Students Already Know and Like

Some Spanish-speaking countries celebrate Halloween, but the traditions may be different or Americanized. For example, in Puerto Rico, kids sing a short rhyme while collecting candy, including the English words ‘trick or treat’ shortened to ‘tricortri.’ It goes: “Tric-or-tri, Hal-lo-ween, dame dulces, no maní” (give me candy, not peanuts). The combination of candy and spooky things will likely attract most kids’ attention, even if Halloween is not celebrated in their home country. Asking students to share whether a spooky season or day is celebrated in their country or family is a great place to start, especially with newcomers. Here are some questions to get your students talking:

¿Celebras Noche de Brujas en tu familia? Do you celebrate Halloween in your family?

¿Hay alguna tradición de Halloween que te guste hacer? Is there any Halloween tradition that you like to do?

¿Te gustan las películas o los juegos de terror? Do you like scary movies or games?

¿Tienes algún plan para Halloween este año? Do you have any plans for Halloween this year?

If you need help understanding Spanish, you could show your students photos representing different Halloween traditions to point to as they answer the questions. For example, a student may tell you that they have been Trick or Treating and can point at the relevant photo so you can understand. You can then teach them how to say this in English. It’s a great way to build student-led relationships.

Spooky Vocabulary Activities

Vocabulary is the basis of most of the activities I use with my ELLs. With newcomers and those with very little English, I start with flashcards to teach new words, then a conversational board game to practice using them, followed by worksheets and puzzles to apply the new knowledge and translation activities to help make those all-important language connections. More advanced ELLs still benefit from these activities as they may need to learn specific vocabulary relating to, for example, monsters, even if they know a lot of other seasonal vocabulary, such as pumpkins or candy.

To help you, I’ve made this FREE list of Halloween vocabulary! It includes the names of monster characters, other spooky nouns, verbs, and adjectives in English and Spanish to help you set up your activities or just for general conversation with your ELLs.

This list is included in the Halloween Activity Pack for Spanish-speaking ELLs, available from my TPT store. The pack comes with colorful, ready-made flashcards, ‘I have… Who has…?’ game cards, a Zombie Escape board game, and so much more to engage all the ELL students in your group. There’s something for everyone in this pack, so go and check it out! The flashcards are especially helpful to native Spanish-speakers as they come with a Spanish phonetic pronunciation of the English word, so students can practice independently!

Improving Speaking and Listening

Now that your ELLs have started to learn Halloween-themed vocabulary, the next stage is encouraging them to use these words in context. An excellent place to start is with the card game ‘I have… Who has…?’. My Halloween version includes the same pictures from the flashcards to encourage students to recall the vocabulary words they have been learning. The first player reads aloud a structured sentence from their card, for example, “I have the pumpkin, who has the werewolf?” and the student who has the werewolf would then reply, “I have the werewolf, who has the…?” and the game continues until all the cards have been read. You can make your version of these cards using pictures online or purchase the pack here with everything ready to print and go!

Grammar and Writing Activities

This is where the challenge for your more advanced students comes in. They may be more confident speaking and understanding spoken English but using correct verb tenses and sentence syntax is an area they could always practice more. Give your students some spooky-themed sentences practicing the ‘be’ verb in different tenses or regular/irregular verbs, depending on their grade level and your learning objectives for this quarter. Fill-in-the-blank sentences are a good start, or choosing the correct answer from a selection if your students need more support. The grammar and writing activities in my Halloween pack are all done for you, including a fun ghost train-themed creative writing activity for your most advanced ELLs!

Making Language Connections: Translation Activities

I strongly believe in empowering multilingual students. Yes, they are in my class to learn English, but I always try to make time to strengthen connections between English and Spanish. The ability of my students to speak Spanish is not something I ignore just because I teach English. Many students need help with translation, even if they are near fluency in both languages. It is a skill that will serve them in numerous ways throughout their lives, and fostering it is very important to me as an educator. So, how do I do this? Well, by making it fun! Word search puzzles and color-by-codes where the student has to translate from Spanish to English always go down well with my ELLs, and I’m sure they will with yours, too! Check out the pack here.

But, wait! What about reading comprehension?

I did not forget about reading! Your more advanced students may well be into reading Goosebumps or other classic horror stories by now, but beginner to intermediate readers may need some language support when reading texts. I have included two reading comprehension passages in the Halloween activities pack; one is a cute short story about a young witch and her kitten, and the other is a non-fiction text about where the tradition of Trick or Treating comes from (do you know?). Both come with comprehension questions with either multiple-choice or full-sentence answer options – choose what’s best for your kids.

And there you have it! Spooky, fun, and educational Halloween activities that will help all levels of ELLs in your group to become more confident in every area of English language learning, from newcomers right up to the more advanced.

Happy teaching!