When I first came to Asia in the 1990s, Halloween wasn’t a thing. First, as an exchange student in Singapore, I remember going around shopping centers looking for something — anything — to remind me of Halloween. Then a few years later I came to Japan on the JET programme. I remember my idea for a Halloween lesson that first year was turned down because the teacher didn’t know what it was. I received little sympathy from those JET participants not from America, who also saw Halloween as purely an American holiday with little cross-cultural merit for their lessons.
However, now wherever you are Halloween is unavoidable in the month of October. Taking up Liam’s call for other Halloween activities in his post, here is a listening activity using a famous Halloween novelty song, Monster Mash by Bobby “Boris” Pickett.
The activity is quite straightforward. Play the song once to introduce it to the class. Then, go over the slide show and review/learn the monsters mentioned in the song. Depending on time/ability, asking students first what monsters they heard in the song is a good segue into the slide show.
After reviewing the vocabulary in slide show, pass out this handout, which asks the students to unscramble lyrics line by line. A space above each set of scrambled lyrics is provided for students to write out the correct line. We have only provided scrambled lyrics for the first four verses, which will take up more than enough of the students’ time and patience.
However, the handout does include the entire song in both English and Japanese. Having bilingual lyrics helps facilitate understanding of a song they are most likely encountering for the first time. This will help them focus on the structure of the individual lines and not the overall meaning of the song.
Let us know how it goes if you try it out. And if you have any ideas for holiday songs, not just Halloween, and the activities to go along with them we’d love to hear about those as well.
