High School - Halloween Ideas

[daphnej225]

Hi Hi,

Here's a VERY quick & easy lesson I used with some of my high school classes this week. Instead of letting them watch an entire movie, which they were begging for, I decided to use the iconic opening scene from SCREAM (1996) and let them get a bit creative.

NOTE: As this scene gets VERY gory at the end, I checked with my co-teachers before using this lesson. Also some of the language is NC-17, so let your co-teacher watch it first. My co-teachers thought it was ok, arguing that students will already have watched many horror movies with much worse content. Watch the scene on YouTube first if you haven't seen it: http://youtu.be/1a_1T4tBWoE

Materials:
* Worksheet (attached)
* SCREAM movie - download from your usual torrent/other site
* SCREAM Korean subtitles (download here: http://bit.ly/w1exUa)

Outline:
* Quick chat with students about weekend activities/current affairs or random warm-up game (5-10 mins)
* Explain lesson outline - watching a horror movie scene & writing a script for what will happen next... Just mentioning the word 'horror movie' had all students sitting upright immediately!  :D
* Play the opening scene of the movie.
* PAUSE AT 02:22 - or just when Casey says "Why... you wanna ask me out on a date?"
* Handout worksheets to groups of 4/5 students & let them write!
* Once scenes are written (~20mins), students must perform their script in front of the class. (10-15mins)
* Play the rest of the scene! (10 mins)

Any feedback, comments, improvements are welcome.
Happy Halloween!

Just wanted to say GREAT IDEA! I took it a step further and allowed the students to "film" themselves. In groups of 4 ( 2 actors, one director, one cameraman) The students rehearsed their lines and filmed their segment. I taught this to a group of all boys and they bought into it, even those performing the female part of Casey. The lines they came up with were in context and at times hilarious. At the end of class we watched all of the videos then finished the original clip. Great class.

I used a small flipcam to film the students but any camera or smartphone with video capabilities will do the trick.

[nikkiskye]

i agree! the SCREAM lesson plan seems the best of all of them to me as i'm sure they've had a million lessons on halloween, especially in elementary and middle school, and i'm just not sure crafts will go down well with my high school kids. and having students creating monsters and inventing ways they murder people just doesn't sit well with me.

so SCREAM it is. :) was just wondering, daphnej225, did you manage to fit the filming and viewing into one lesson? i would love to try!

[nikkiskye]

just watched that intro scene from scream again after many years...i might be having second thoughts. it's pretty damn gruesome. my boys will be fine, but not sure about my girls. :/

[rachelsn]

I love the scream lesson plan idea, but I too think it may be too gruesome for my all girls H.S. I am searching for a similar scene that maybe doesn't get quite so gory. If anyone has any other good scenes please do post! :)

[bfrench]

Hey Guys

I hope this helps. I made a ppt for high school for Halloween. This lesson went down well with all my kids and its not too challenging. Its a mix and match of some of the lessons on waygook so thanks to those that I stole ideas from. First they listen to' The nightmare before xmas' song and fill in the missing lyrics. Second they watch the trailer for 'Nightmare on Elm Street'  and filll in the missing words. After that we go over some vocab for Halloween on the PPT.

Lastly they make a sort of Acrostic Poem about Halloween ( where you write the word down the side and begin a sentence with the letter) The poems were actually really good. I gave them a Halloween vocab sheet to help them with their poems and got them to read them in class.  I did this with all levels of Gr2 Girls and Im doing it with my Gr1's this week.

[miljennifer]

Hi Hi,

Here's a VERY quick & easy lesson I used with some of my high school classes this week. Instead of letting them watch an entire movie, which they were begging for, I decided to use the iconic opening scene from SCREAM (1996) and let them get a bit creative.

NOTE: As this scene gets VERY gory at the end, I checked with my co-teachers before using this lesson. Also some of the language is NC-17, so let your co-teacher watch it first. My co-teachers thought it was ok, arguing that students will already have watched many horror movies with much worse content. Watch the scene on YouTube first if you haven't seen it: http://youtu.be/1a_1T4tBWoE

Materials:
* Worksheet (attached)
* SCREAM movie - download from your usual torrent/other site
* SCREAM Korean subtitles (download here: http://bit.ly/w1exUa)

Outline:
* Quick chat with students about weekend activities/current affairs or random warm-up game (5-10 mins)
* Explain lesson outline - watching a horror movie scene & writing a script for what will happen next... Just mentioning the word 'horror movie' had all students sitting upright immediately!  :D
* Play the opening scene of the movie.
* PAUSE AT 02:22 - or just when Casey says "Why... you wanna ask me out on a date?"
* Handout worksheets to groups of 4/5 students & let them write!
* Once scenes are written (~20mins), students must perform their script in front of the class. (10-15mins)
* Play the rest of the scene! (10 mins)

Any feedback, comments, improvements are welcome.
Happy Halloween!

Great lesson idea - thanks! Just one thing - how do you play the Korean subtitles if you're using the movie clip from YouTube? Is there any way to do it or do you have to download the actual movie?

Thanks - and sorry for being such a newbie!

[miss_cho]

This activity is great for my after school class but I cant access the youtube video - it says that it's restricted from my region. How are you guys getting around that? I guess I could download the entire movie if necessary ...

[dranrebc]

You can also watch the clip here on VIMEO:
It's low quality though... just for reference purposes!

I recommend you download the full movie from torrents etc, and then watch it on GOM Player and drag n' drop the subtitles file onto the video screen. If you can't do, ask your students or co-teacher for help...  and if you can't do that: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+do+I+use+subtitles+in+gom+player

Best of luck and thanks for the feedback!

[tipani]

I'm having trouble getting the subtitles to sync.  Is there another subtitle out there that i could use? 

[hmartin832]

Halloween dance from a party in Jeju.

YouTube clip

[rokdav]

Thanks for the great Scream lesson. I was wondering did anyone find any other movie that was suitable in the end?

[Alecsi]

The students all know about Halloween because they have done it almost every year with their foreign teachers. So this lesson is more about practicing conversation skills than about learning new information.

It uses a "What did you do last weekend?" dialogue and a game using Halloween Costumes. I practiced the dialogue with the students (See attached Halloween Lesson Explanation), and then attached pictures of Halloween Costumes/ Famous people to the students backs. They had to use the dialogue to guess their costume. (See pictures attached)

I did a second Halloween lesson where I did a short recap on Halloween and asked the students if they knew where it came from and explained the tradition to them. I also explained why candy was given, the meaning of trick or treat and the reason behind costumes. I then asked each group to draw the scariest costume they could think of. While the were drawing I told them they had to think of 5 sentences to explain their drawing to someone who couldn't see it.

When they were finished I explained that one group member would come to the front while a different group explained their drawing. I asked each group to choose someone come up and got them to raise their hands. I then explained that the volunteer would need to draw the costume on the board the way the group explained it. The catch was that they could only use English.

Both lessons were a lot of fun, and worked really well. The kids had tons of fun. I actually did the second lesson I explained first, and the other the week later.