Boosting Engagement With Halloween-Themed eLearning Ideas
October is nearing its end, signifying the culmination of one of our favorite holidays of the year, Halloween! This spooky and mischievous holiday also brings great joy to children of all ages and can be a great tool for teachers who want to add some (pumpkin) spice to their classroom. Even if your classes are taking place online, you can still enjoy the festive spirit. In this article, we share 6 Halloween-themed eLearning ideas that will make learning fun and engaging.
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6 Ways To Bring Halloween Into Your Virtual Classroom
1. Spice Up Your Content
A great way to get your students engaged is by letting the Halloween spirit invade your virtual classroom. Change your normal cursor to a pumpkin, use a Halloween-themed background, subtract and multiply witch hats, and, in general, transform your platform into a colorful and fun learning environment. This will allow you to create more buzz around your regular teaching material while students get in the mood for the season.
2. Read Halloween Stories
Halloween offers great reading opportunities for students. Spooky stories tend to be very entertaining and captivating, especially when accompanied by some eerie music and a Halloween-themed background. Use these to get students to enrich their vocabulary, practice their grammar skills, and exercise their short-term memory by answering some questions. If your students are old enough, you can even task them with coming up with and writing their own stories. Then, you can have a “by-the-fire” reading session, where everyone shares their creation.
3. Get Into The Science Side Of Halloween
Another eLearning Halloween idea is incorporating some science into the mix. For example, you can practice geometry by measuring the circumference of a pumpkin. Or, you can learn about the most well-known animals in Halloween lore: bats and spiders. Let students choose between the two animals and assign them a virtual research project. What is a more obscure fact about these mysterious creatures? Are they really as dangerous as shown in scary Halloween movies?
4. Learn About Halloween Around The World
This holiday can be a great opportunity to broaden your students’ horizons by helping them learn about similar holidays around the world. From Halloween’s roots in the Celtic Festival of Samhain to Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos, there are definitely many fascinating holidays your students can learn about. Once again, you can ask them to use their research skills and create small teams in breakout rooms. Then they can prepare a presentation for the rest of the class.
5. Organize A Virtual Scavenger Hunt
One trick that helps increase learner engagement in the virtual classroom is incorporating some movement in the session. And what better way to get your students moving than a virtual scavenger hunt? You can keep it simple by asking students to locate and quickly bring in front of the computer Halloween-themed items. If you want to make it even more challenging, you can use riddles or give clues to lead students to the right answer. Just remember to use a timer so that everyone is motivated to be back in time.
6. Throw A Halloween Costume Party
Students are going to love the idea of closing the Halloween season with a virtual costume party. And it’s definitely easier to plan and host than an on-site school party. All you have to do is set a date, pick out a fitting background for the video conference, set some guidelines to avoid unnecessary scares, and encourage your students to show up wearing an imaginative costume. During the live event, everyone can present their costumes and explain why they chose them.
Conclusion
This Halloween season, cultivate the imagination of your students and spark their interest by bringing the festive spirit into the virtual classroom. Hopefully, the Halloween-themed eLearning ideas we shared in this article will help you make virtual learning that much more engaging and fun for your students.
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