Comenius Regio – IES Bajo Cinca, Fraga.

Spain -- Halloween Project, 3rd ESO

COMENIUS REGIO

YEAR 2010/11

HALLOWEEN Project

Subject: ENGLISH

LEVEL: 3º ESO D (=1st Diversification). These 15-year-old students are in a special

group because according to the Spanish curriculum, they are 2 years behind a class of
the same age. However, they have a great interest in achieving the Certificate of
Secondary Education.

The following activity consists of an oral presentation about Halloween based on an

investigation done by the students. For that purpose, the teacher will talk the students
about the tradition of Halloween and we will compare it with similar traditions in
other countries on All Hallow’s Eve.

The objective of this Project is to foster Commnicative Competente in the classroom,

which includes the linguistic and the sociocultural subcompetences together with the
4 skills: listening, reading, writing and speaking. In this case, there is less interacting
because it is an individual project.

- Resources:

. Vocabulary and expressions related to Halloween: For example: Jack-o-Lantern,

Trick or Treat, All Hallow’s Eve, Witch, Spooky etc.
. Handouts where students practise the new vocabulary.
. DIN-A3 paper where they will do the written project explaining different topics
related to Halloween.:
- The origin of Halloween
- Halloween in USA
- Halloween in Ireland
- Halloween in Guatemala (recipe)
- Halloween in Uruguay
- All Saint’s Day: Typical recipes (How to make “panellets”) etc.

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 Comenius Regio – IES Bajo Cinca, Fraga. Spain -- Halloween Project, 3rd ESO

. Markers (they basically use orange and black colours) to write the titles of their
projects.
. Dictionaries.
. Images with symbols related to Halloween (eg.:pumpkins, ghosts, etc,) searched on
the Internet in order to make their texts nicer.
. Use of the library computers to search for information and to print the students’s
projects.

- Students groups:

It is an individual project although outside the institute the students try to help each
other when printing colour images since there are some students who do not have a
colour printer.
Once the written part is finished and corrected by the teacher, the students, outside
the class, get together to prepare and rehearse the oral presentation.

-Timing:

In class: 7 sessions of 50 minutes each.

Outside the class: Each student devotes the time they need according to their English
level. Some students have to repeat their project up to 3 times. The part that requires
more effort is the written one.
In one of the sessions in class, the librarian analyses with the students the first version
of the projects, he suggests how to improve them ( margins, typing, order and so on).
Afterwards, students had to rewrite a neat version.

Once the writing has been corrected, the students have to prepare the oral
presentation. Each student needs about 2 or 3 hours to prepare it. Despite the fact that
it is an individual project, students meet outside the class to rehearse their oral
presentation and help each other.

-Objectives for each task:

1st task:
Explain what the oral presentation about Halloween consists of. Students are based
on a text they have written after doing some research. For that purpose the teacher
will talk to the students about the tradition of Halloween and we will compare it with
similar traditions in other countries. The teacher asks them what they know about
Halloween (PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE).

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 Comenius Regio – IES Bajo Cinca, Fraga. Spain -- Halloween Project, 3rd ESO

2nd task:
Specific vocabulary about Halloween is given to the students. In this case students
are given a handout with a skeleton where they learn the skeleton bones. At home,
students must, individually, look up in the dictionary the meaning of the different
skeleton bones.

3rd Task:
Once they have learnt the necessary vocabulary in order to write the description of
the oral Project, at home they start written part of the Project.

4th Task:
In class, the writing is corrected and improved.

5th Task:
Students, with the help of the librarian, are given guides to improve the presentation
of the poster.

6th Task:
After several improvements and once the writing has been corrected again, students
are given guides for the oral presentation, with the support of the librarian.

7th Task:
Final Project: Oral presentation of Halloween Projects in front of the class. Students
are filmed and the filming will be analysed in class so that students can follow their
own progress.

Conclusión

This Project has been used as a tool to improve students’ communicative competente.
They have learnt new vocabulary. They have improved their writing and the speaking
skills. However, we must reinforce both of them, especially the oral part. Students
need much more practice for future projects.

Susana Sisó Castro

IES Bajo Cinca
Fraga (Huesca)
Spain