Witches' brew

Days are getting shorter and colder and supermarkets offer special deals on sweets. I don't even have to look at the calendar to know Halloween is just around the corner. All Saints' Eve is my younger students' favourite celebration so I always digress a bit from our programme and try to make something special a few days before 31 October.

In this fun activity, students learn vocabulary related to cooking and revise the imperative form by writing their own recipe for a magic potion made of horrid ingredients of their own choice.

I usually start this lesson with a general discussion about cooking. I ask my students if they like preparing food and I encourage them to tell me about the dishes they can prepare.

Then I hand out a few recipes and together we make a list of verbs and other words which they might find useful in writing their own recipe (I make sure to write everything up on the whiteboard as they will have to use that vocabulary later).
At this stage I also elicit that the imperative form is used when writing a recipe. Depending on my students' level I decide whether it's necessary to explain the imperative form in detail or a quick revision is enough. There are a number of recipes you can use here: you can choose a more elaborate recipe for your more advanced students or a simple one for your less proficient pupils. Click here to have a look at my favourite Halloween recipes.

OK. so students are now familiar with the structure of a typical recipe and know a lot of cooking words. They have seen a few examples and are ready to create their own recipe...BUT there are a few things they need to do before they roll up their sleeves and get down to hard work.

First of all, I show them this short video and elicit answers to two questions:

1. What is White Queen making? A magic potion.
2. What does the potion do? It makes Alice shorter. 

Now I tell students they're going to make a special recipe for their own magic brew. In order to do that, they need to think of three things:

a) What will your magic potion do?
b) What ingredients will you need?
c) A step by step, detailed instruction how to make your portion.

It's important to point out that a good magic potion doesn't include "typical" ingredients...I always help pupils come up with yucky, hair-raising ingredients and let their imagination run wild. Some of the ingredients might include eye balls, finger/toe nails, witch's tooth, drops/millilitres/litres of tears/sweat/saliva/snot, nose hair, tongue, fingers, toes, earwax, eyelashes...The more imaginative and detailed the list of ingredients is , the more interesting the outcome, so I make sure to help everybody with gruesome vocab.

I never forget to play some spine-chilling Halloween music to get everyone's creative juices flowing. You might find this  Halloween Music Playlist handy.

SPOOOOOKY  BREWING EVERYONE!

P.S. If you're looking for more teaching ideas for Halloween, have a look at these websites:

https://onthesamepageelt.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/using-context-clues-ten-halloween-songs/

https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-halloween-activities/

http://busyteacher.org/17448-10-fun-halloween-games-english-practice.html

https://oupeltglobalblog.com/2014/10/23/efl-classroom-activities-and-resources-for-halloween/

https://www.eslkidstuff.com/HalloweenGames.htm

https://www.esolcourses.com/links/halloween-resources.html

http://bogglesworldesl.com/halloween_worksheets.htm

https://www.facebook.com/onthesamepage.elt/posts/2057350524282458:0

http://consiliumeducation.com/itm/2017/10/19/halloween-for-early-years/

https://speakinggames.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/delta-downloads-2-e28093-halloween-riddle-maze.pdf

http://www.mes-english.com/flashcards/halloween.php

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/halloween

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/halloween-2

https://tekhnologic.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/trick-or-treat-the-game/

A wee treat for Ed Sheeran fans ↓

This quick activity is based on Ed Sheeran's "Shape of you". My teenage students are absolutely crazy about this song and have been nagging me to work on it for ages.

Apart from completing a typical gap fill task, students write a short story using some words and phrases from the song.

To begin with, students work on the first exercise in order to get familiarised with some vocabulary from the song.

Then, they listen to the song and complete the gaps in the lyrics with the words from the first activity.

 After discussing the song and the lyrics (make sure you explain the underlined words/phrases and any words your students don't know), students draw a piece of paper with a character's description written on it. They need to work individually or in pairs and write a short story about the character. They need to use at least 6 words or/and phrases from the song.I always encourage my students to use the words that are new to them. 

In the end students swap their stories and looking at the list of all the characters they try to guess who's described in the text. Encourage them to justify their choices and ask authors of the text to confirm/reveal their true characters. 

I came up with this activity with my intermediate students in mind but it can be easily adapted to higher levels by not giving them the first activity and asking them to fill in the gaps without help. 

Downloadable worksheet  → Ed Sheeran "Shape of you" activity


For other ideas how to use songs in teaching and more downloadable worksheets click here

Humans of New York lesson plan and worksheets

How do you procrastinate (I know you do ;) )?? I’m guilty of procrastinating every day. I sometimes convince myself that I can’t work until the house is spotless so I clean it until every room shines. On other occasions I feel I can’t do anything before watching an episode (or three) of Friends (btw. My life wouldn’t be complete without Monica, Chandler, Rachel, Ross, Phoebe, and Joe). And then, there are days when I just scroll up and down my facebook checking out what’s happening in the world…not very productive, right?

Not everything on facebook is useless though! There are some pretty cool pages out there! One of them is Humans of New York - a photoblog with street portraits and interviews collected on the streets of New York City. I’m absolutely hooked on reading those short but inspiring stories!

I have recently been practising for FCE speaking test part 2 (photo comparison) and I noticed that my students struggle with speaking and speculating about photos. Even though they know some useful phrases to make hypotheses and they’re familiar with modal verbs of speculation, they still lack ability to put these into practice. I knew I had to stimulate my students’ imagination and give them an interesting task to help them become more successful at speculating about photos, so I decided to turn one of my procrastinating activities into a task for my students. This is how I came up with a lesson plan based on a few photos and stories taken from HONY in order to give my students the opportunity to practice modal verbs and other phrases of speculation to hypothesise about photos.

In the lesson students can also become more confident at describing people and their feelings as well as telling or writing stories. The lesson can be adapted to lower levels and can be used to practice for other Cambridge exams such as PET speaking test part 3 (photo description).


Here are the links to the lesson plan (link) and the worksheets:


Humans of New York lesson step by step
Humans of New York lesson photos A-E
Humans of New York matching activity
Humans of New York matching activity KEY
Humans of New York creative writing (homework)

Hope you like the lesson. Don’t hesitate to write to me with your comments about it :)