This month we are celebrating Halloween and Mental Health Awareness and we have prepared a number of activities for the ELT classroom, including a spine-chilling listening and writing activity about a horror movie, an intriguing speaking activity about Halloween characters, a fun speaking and listening activity for the youngest learners, and a thought-provoking text about mental health! Check the activities out now and try them out in your ELT classroom!

1. October – Halloween
This month we are celebrating Halloween and Mental Health Awareness and we have
prepared a number of activities for the ELT classroom, including a spine-chilling listening and
writing activity about a horror movie, an intriguing speaking activity about Halloween
characters, a fun speaking and listening activity for the youngest learners, and a thought-
provoking text about mental health! Check the activities out now and try them out in your ELT
classroom!
1. Mental Health Awareness Week – Open cloze...........................................................................2
2. The Others – Write your story........................................................................................................4
3. Halloween – Tell me about.............................................................................................................5
4. Halloween – Find the differences..................................................................................................6
5. References........................................................................................................................................7

2. 1. Mental Health Awareness Week – Open cloze
Level: B2/C1
Skills: speaking, use of English
Interaction: individual activity, pair work (weaker groups), whole class activity
Time: 30 minutes
Warm up (15’) – whole class activity
 What are the main mental health problems nowadays?
 What are the main causes of mental health problems?
 What can we do to solve these problems?
Open cloze (10’) – individual/pair work
For questions 1-8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap.
Use only one word in each gap. There is an example at the beginning.
It’s mental health awareness week, 2018. And that’s good. It’s important (0) _to_ know about
something that affects literally everyone, and that (1) ______ quarter of the population
regularly struggle (2) ______. It’s weird that some people seem unaware when you put it in
those terms, but that does seem to be the case.
Perhaps the term is a bit misleading, or not specific enough. It’s not exactly mental health that
people need to be made aware (3) ______, so much as the fact that mental health can, and
regularly does, go wrong. And when someone’s mental health (4) ______ falter or fail, they
should receive the same concern and help that someone with a more obvious “physical”
ailment should get, not scorn and stigma, as so often happens.
This is where awareness helps. If you end (5) ______ with depression, anxiety, OCD or any
other condition, it can be hugely debilitating, often consuming your daily existence. Having
someone, be they a family member or total stranger, dismiss it outright or accuse you (6)
______ “faking it” or similar can only make it worse, compounding the problem.
This is how awareness campaigns can be beneficial. Just like how increased exposure to
people of different ethnicities or backgrounds has (7) ______ shown to reduce feelings of
prejudice and suspicion, so increased exposure to, or discussions about, mental health
problems and what they mean for those who deal with them can enhance the understanding,
or even just the patience, of those who don’t have to.
Nevertheless, raising awareness is just the start of the process, not the end. There’s a lot of
work that (8) ______ doing here. And that’s something we should all bear in mind.

3. Key
1. A
2. WITH
3. OF
4. DOES/ MAY/ MIGHT
5. UP
6. OF
7. BEEN
8. NEEDS

4. 2. The Others – Write your story
Level: B1/B2
Skills: speaking, listening, writing
Interaction: whole class activity, group activity
Pre-teaching: how to write a story (linkers, structure, adjectives, adverbs)
Time: 60 minutes
Warm up! (10’) – whole class activity
 Do you like horror movies?
 What is the last horror movie you watched?
 Have you ever seen “The Others”? Do you know what it is about?
Watch the trailer (5’) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7pKqaPtMiA
Follow up (10’) – whole class activity
 What is the film about?
 Who are the main characters?
 Where does the film take place?
Work in groups of 3 (25’)
Students are asked to work together and write a story about the film and what happens at
the end (100/150 w).
Work in groups of 3 (10’)
Students are asked to swap stories and find 5 aspects to improve (mistakes, more
adjectives, paragraphs…)
Students should hand in their stories for correction

5. 3. Halloween – Tell me about
Level: A2 (Key/Flyers)
Skills: speaking/speaking, writing
Interaction: whole class activity
Time: 10 minutes – at the beginning or at the end of the lesson
Tell me about yourselves (10’)
Speaking (if students are not wearing a costume)
1. Students are given 5 minutes to think what Halloween character they want to be and
come up with four sentences about it.
2. In turns, each student will say his/her sentence and the rest of the students have to
guess what Halloween character the student is.
Writing and speaking (if students are wearing a costume).
1. Students are given five minutes to write four sentences about their Halloween
character on a piece of paper.
2. The teacher collects all the pieces of paper and will ask students at random to read
the pieces of paper.
3. One student at a time will read one of the pieces of paper aloud and the rest of the
class has to guess who wrote it.

6. 4. Halloween – Find the differences
Level: Starters/Movers
Skills: speaking/listening
Content: Halloween vocabulary
Interaction: whole class activity
Pre-teaching: differences (but), adjectives, prepositions
Time: 10 minutes – at the beginning or at the end of the lesson
Starters – whole class activity
1. The teacher displays one of the pictures on the screen so that all students can see it.
2. Students stand in a line facing the screen.
3. The teacher/one student at a time says a sentence about the picture. If the sentence
is true, students have to move to the right but if it is false, they should move to the left.
Movers – whole class activity
1. Students are divided into two groups e.g. Pumpkins vs. Ghosts.
2. Each group has to speak about one picture (Picture A, Picture B).
3. Pumpkins say a sentence about picture A and Ghosts have to listen and say how their
picture is different.
4. Each time the group (all students should participate) produces a correct sentence, they
get a point.
5. If they make a mistake (grammar, vocab, content). The other team then has one
chance to correct the sentence and win the other team’s point.
6. The team who gets the most points by the end wins.

7. 7
5. References
Burnett, D. (2018). Mental health: awareness is great, but action is essential. The Guardian,
[online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-
flapping/2018/may/15/mental-health-awareness-is-great-but-action-is-essential
[Accessed 10 Oct. 2018]
The Others. (2001). [film] USA: Alejandro Amenábar