ESL Jigsaws

Simple Halloween Lesson for Low Beginners

Posted by Nancy Callan on 24 October 2016 | 0 Comments

Tags: LINC 1, PBLA, ESOL, ENL, literacy, matching, reading, writing, ESL

Halloween can be disconcerting for new immigrants and refugees who may not understand what it's all about. An important role for ESL teachers is helping students crack our cultural code. 

Here is a free, downloadable lesson I created for a LINC 1 class that should be suitable for any low beginner class. If it's not right for your level, perhaps you could send a link of this page on to another teacher who might be able to use it. It's completely free for classroom teacher use. 

I'm a big fan of cutting things up and having students put them back together. I start the lesson by having students practice the vocabulary with a matching exercise:

Then they read the story, cut it up, put it back together, and read it again. And again. My low level students do a lot of things over and over:

Then students fill in the cloze exercise, which is identical to the story they have read and practiced putting back together. You can have students close their books and listen to you read the story or they can do it as a copying exercise, which can be quite challenging for very low level ESL.

Click on one of the page images to view the exercise and print it out to use in your own class. Let me know how it works. For a more substantial, slightly higher level low beginner unit on Halloween, check out Callan's Canadian Holidays for Low Beginner ESL or Callan's American Holiday Jigsaws 1. 

Please read the inspiring true story of my student's first Halloween entitled "Halloween Noodles" for a reminder of why Halloween can end up being important for new immigrants and refugees. Read it here.