This month, ETA Michael Walsh wished to incorporate Halloween into his lessons. His tenth grade lesson plan for “Recounted Text” allowed students to work in groups of five.

Collectively, the groups were tasked with correctly ordering sentences to reveal a short Halloween story about one of their classmates.

Group members were assigned mini-tasks to ensure individual accountability in group settings. In each group, one student wrote a list of English words from the story that the group did not know.

One student used a dictionary to translate the unknown English words. One student changed the underlined verbs from simple present tense to simple past tense. One student had to write down the short Halloween story once the correct order was determined. And one student had to read the group’s story to the class.

Michael really enjoyed teaching this lesson because his students were interested in learning about Halloween, his favorite holiday, and there was an observable increase in productivity from students, as they worked on individual tasks to complete one, collective assignment.

Michael Walsh is currently teaching at SMKN 1 Tana Toraja, South Sulawesi.