6 Fun Halloween Activities for Your ASL Classroom This October

October is the perfect time to bring a little Halloween fun into your ASL classroom! Students are ready for seasonal activities, and teachers are looking for ways to keep everyone engaged while continuing to build communication skills.

The good news? You don’t have to put your regular curriculum on hold to make room for Halloween. With a few creative activities, you can practice vocabulary, fingerspelling, storytelling, and all three modes of communication while keeping students engaged.

Whether you’re teaching ASL 1 or working with more experienced signers, here are six Halloween activities you can use throughout October!

The activities listed below can be found already made for you here.

1. Describe a Jack-o’-Lantern: Partner Communication

Want to get students signing to each other? This activity is a fun way to practice descriptive vocabulary, facial expressions, and interpersonal communication.

Here’s how it works:

1. Give each student a worksheet featuring several different jack-o’-lantern faces.
2. Partner students up and have them sit facing away from each other or use a divider so they cannot see one another’s worksheets.
3. Student A chooses a jack-o’-lantern and describes its features in ASL without pointing to the picture.
4. Student B watches and identifies the matching pumpkin on their own worksheet. They can number the pumpkins in the order they are described or draw the pumpkin based on their partner’s description.
5. Have students switch roles and repeat!

Encourage students to describe details such as the shape of the eyes, the nose, the mouth, and the number of teeth. Depending on their proficiency level, you can challenge them to use more detailed descriptions and classifiers.

Teacher tip: Remind students that their goal is to communicate clearly, not simply to sign as quickly as possible. If their partner doesn’t understand, they can try describing the features in a different way.

This activity is an excellent way to practice descriptive language and learn how important visual details are in ASL communication. 

2. Would You Rather? Halloween Presentational Task

Would you rather spend Halloween in a haunted house or go trick-or-treating in a neighborhood full of spooky decorations? Questions like these get students thinking, making choices, and explaining their opinions.

Turn this familiar activity into a presentational communication task!

Here’s how it works:

1. Present students with Halloween-themed Would You Rather? questions.
2. Have students select a question and decide which option they would choose.
3. Ask students to explain their choice using ASL, including reasons and supporting details.
4. Students record a video of themselves presenting their answer.
5. Share the videos with the class or use them as an opportunity for individual feedback.

Some possible prompts include:

• Would you rather visit a haunted house or walk through a corn maze?
• Would you rather be a vampire or a werewolf?
• Would you rather have a pet black cat or a pet bat?
• Would you rather go trick-or-treating or attend a Halloween party?
• Would you rather live in a haunted house or a spooky castle?
• Would you rather eat only Halloween candy for a day or never eat candy again?

Adjust the expectations to fit your students’ proficiency levels. Beginning students might sign their choice and one reason, while more advanced students can provide an introduction, explain their reasoning, and conclude their presentation.

Teacher tip: Give students a planning sheet with space to list their choice, reasons, and supporting details before recording. This helps them organize their thoughts without writing an English script to translate word for word.

3. Roll a Halloween Story: Let the Dice Decide!

If your students enjoy storytelling, this activity is a great way to bring some Halloween creativity into your classroom.

Storytelling encourages students to connect vocabulary, use facial expressions, incorporate classifiers, and develop a sequence of events. Adding dice makes the process unpredictable and fun!

Here’s how it works:

1. Prepare Halloween-themed story dice with pictures or vocabulary related to characters, settings, objects, and actions.
2. Students roll the dice to determine which elements must appear in their story.
3. Give students time to plan their story using the results of their rolls.
4. Students sign their stories to a partner, small group, or the class.

For example, students might roll a witch, a haunted house, a black cat, and a pumpkin. How will they connect these elements into one story?

You can keep the activity simple for ASL 1 by asking students to create a short story with a beginning, middle, and end. For more advanced students, require a problem and solution, descriptive details, or a surprise ending.

You can also turn this into a collaborative activity. Each student adds a new event to the story, building on what the previous student signed.

Teacher tip: Don’t worry about students creating perfect stories. The goal is to encourage them to take risks, make connections, and communicate in ASL.

4. Halloween Dice Vocabulary Games

Sometimes you need a quick activity that gets students practicing vocabulary without requiring an entire class period. Dice games are perfect for warm-ups, review days, stations, or those last few minutes before the bell rings.

Create a Halloween vocabulary list and assign a different task to each number on a die.

For example:

• Roll a 1: Sign a Halloween vocabulary word.
• Roll a 2: Fingerspell a Halloween-related word.
• Roll a 3: Describe a Halloween object without naming it.
• Roll a 4: Use a Halloween vocabulary word in a sentence.
• Roll a 5: Ask your partner a Halloween-related question.
• Roll a 6: Create a short story using a Halloween word.

Students can work with partners or in small groups. You can also change the tasks to match your current unit or students’ proficiency levels.

For beginning students, focus on familiar vocabulary and simple questions. For intermediate students, require more elaboration, storytelling, or spontaneous conversation.

Teacher tip: Keep a set of dice and activity boards ready to go. You’ll have an easy-to-use review activity whenever you need one!

5. Halloween Four Corners: Interpretive Communication

Looking for a way to get students moving while practicing interpretive skills? Try a Halloween-themed Four Corners activity!

This activity asks students to watch a signed prompt, interpret its meaning, and move to the corner that matches their response.

Here’s how it works:

1. Label the four corners of your classroom with four possible answers.
2. Sign a Halloween-related question or statement in ASL.
3. Students watch the prompt, determine which answer best represents their choice, and move to the corresponding corner.
4. Once students have chosen a corner, ask a few volunteers to explain their choices in ASL.
5. Repeat with a new prompt.

For example, your corners might represent four Halloween activities: trick-or-treating, watching scary movies, carving pumpkins, and visiting a haunted house.

You can sign a question such as, “Which Halloween activity would you choose?” Students interpret the question and move to their preferred corner.

To make the activity more interpretive, sign short descriptions or scenarios and have students move to the corner that matches what they understood. You could describe a character, a setting, or an activity and ask students to identify the correct answer.

Teacher tip: Keep the signed prompts in ASL rather than displaying written English questions. This gives students an authentic opportunity to practice watching, processing, and responding to signed language.

You can also use follow-up questions to encourage interpersonal communication once students reach their corners.

6. Halloween Hangman: Fingerspelling and the ASL Alphabet

Need a quick way to review the ASL alphabet and fingerspelling? A Halloween version of Hangman can be a fun addition to your October activities.

Choose Halloween-related words such as pumpkin, monster, candy, witch, skeleton, or vampire. Instead of simply writing letters on the board, have students use fingerspelling to make their guesses.

Here’s how it works:

1. Choose a Halloween word and draw a blank for each letter.
2. Students take turns fingerspelling a letter they think appears in the word.
3. If the letter is correct, reveal its position in the word.
4. If the letter is incorrect, add a part to your Halloween-themed drawing, such as a jack-o’-lantern or a friendly ghost.
5. Continue until students solve the word or complete the drawing.

You can play as a whole class, in teams, or with partners.

For ASL 1 students, use shorter words and review letter formation before beginning. For more experienced students, increase the difficulty with longer words or ask students to sign the word once it is solved.

Teacher tip: Make sure students are actually producing the letters in ASL rather than simply calling out English letter names. You can also ask students to repeat the complete word using accurate fingerspelling after each round.

This is an easy way to add a little seasonal fun while reinforcing a foundational ASL skill.

Make October Fun Without Adding More Planning to Your Plate

Halloween activities don’t have to mean hours of extra preparation or taking a break from meaningful language learning. A few well-planned seasonal activities can give your students opportunities to practice interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational communication while keeping your classroom fresh and engaging.

Try one activity as a warm-up, build another into a station rotation, or save a storytelling game for a day when your students need something different.

And remember, you don’t have to save all the fun for Halloween week! Spread these activities throughout October to keep students engaged while continuing to build their ASL skills.

Looking for more Halloween activities for your ASL classroom?

Creative ASL Teaching has these activities already made for you and more to select from in the store. Happy Halloween.

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