Halloween 100 years ago

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (People and characters mini-series, episode 28) is a short documentary about Halloween masks and costumes a hundred years ago, told with real photos. A single narrator starts with a Halloween mask from Ireland, about a hundred years old, made of old cloth with a face painted on it. Long ago in Scotland and Ireland, people believed that on the 31st of October dead people came back as ghosts, so they wore masks and costumes to scare the ghosts away, or so the ghosts did not know who they were. A hundred years ago, most families made their costumes at home with old clothes, paper and sheets: children in Canada in 1934 dressed as a soldier and a flower, and three sisters in 1940 next to a pumpkin with a face and a light inside. Then shops started to sell costumes: a shop in Boston in 1953 sells a costume with a mask for about two dollars, and in 1963 two children visit their dad, the President of the United States, at work in their costumes. The language is the past simple for long ago (believed, came, wore, made, started), the present simple with there is and can you see for the photos, and make or buy in the closing question, with vocabulary for clothes, Halloween and shops. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (ghost, costume, mask). The study topic is masks and costumes.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script. Each pack is a one-page PDF with the text, three photos, the key words and the 10 questions: a pupil pack, and a teacher pack with the answers highlighted. It also has a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key. It has no lesson plan. Play the episode twice, hand out the pupil pack, then use the closing question (Do you make your costume, or do you buy it?) to start a short class survey. Learners should know clothes, face and shop, and be able to read a date such as the 31st of October and a year such as 1934.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged people-and-characters (6e, "Personnes et personnages", study topic "Masques et costumes", Cycle 3). The episode targets CEFR level A1+.