Seasonal businesses: Halloween edition
Lesson plan overview
This B2-C1 Business ESL lesson plan is based on the lesson “Seasonality in business”, but has been tweaked to deal with Halloween, and how businesses could capitalize on this holiday. Other lessons you might find interesting are: “Business models”, “Business relationships”, “Overpopulation” (for describing graphs), “Christmas marketing“, “FOMO marketing“, “Phrasal verbs: marketing and advertising”, “Phrasal verbs: trends and graphs“, and “Phrasal verbs: sales and selling”.
Speaking: The lesson starts with a few conversion questions about seasonal businesses, and products that are in high demand, or only available around Halloween.
Vocabulary: Students learn vocabulary to describe graphs and charts. First, they look at 4 graphs showing the sales of 4 seasonal businesses and match the business to the correct graph. Next, they read a short analysis for each graph and learn vocabulary to describe graphs (e.g. a surge, a boom, skyrocket, soar, pick up, spike dramatically, a slump, a dip, a plunge, plummet, a drastic decline, taper off, drop off completely). Then, students are given 2 more graphs and are asked to describe them. After that, they are given a few seasonal businesses and are asked to talk about their peak seasons, and off-seasons, using the vocabulary.
Vocabulary: Students learn vocabulary related to business seasonality, which also serves as a pre-listening activity (e.g. diversify, multiple revenue streams, core business, a pop-up store, temporary lease, seasonal retailer, to capitalize on something). To practice, they complete a gap-fill activity and then discuss a few conversation questions.
Videos: Students watch a video called “How Spirit Halloween Became a Titan of the $10 Billion Halloween Industry“, and complete 2 listening comprehension activities.
Speaking: Finally, students are asked to discuss how different businesses could capitalize on Halloween.
For more speaking practice, you can check out the conversation cards.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
Pre-class activities
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In-class activities
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Additional resources
Each video-based lesson plan includes links to additional resources (videos and articles), which are FREE can be found online (in the pre-class activities page. These links aim to extend the learning experience, enabling students to connect classroom knowledge with real-world applications.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
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