The Witches: An Engaging ESL Resource for Halloween, Literature and Popular Culture

 The Witches by Roald Dahl is a classic children’s novel that combines fantasy, humor, mystery, suspense, and a surprisingly dark story about witches who secretly live among ordinary people. First published in 1983, the novel follows a young boy who discovers a secret society of witches and becomes involved in a dangerous plan to stop them. The story has also been adapted into films, including the 1990 movie directed by Nicolas Roeg and the 2020 adaptation directed by Robert Zemeckis.

For ESL and EFL teachers, The Witches offers an exciting opportunity to combine English language learning with literature, Halloween activities, storytelling, and popular culture. Students can explore vocabulary, characters, plot development, descriptive language, and different portrayals of witches while developing their reading, speaking, listening, and writing skills.

Why Use The Witches in Your ESL Lessons?

High Student Engagement + Halloween Activities + Popular Culture make The Witches an especially interesting topic for English language learners.

High Student Engagement

The story immediately captures students’ attention through its mysterious characters, unusual plot, magical elements, humor, and moments of suspense. The idea that witches could secretly exist in the real world can encourage students to predict what might happen next, describe characters, discuss imaginary situations, and express their opinions. The combination of accessible storytelling and more challenging vocabulary also makes The Witches suitable for intermediate and advanced ESL students.

The novel provides numerous opportunities for classroom discussion. Students can talk about fear, courage, friendship, family, appearance, identity, and the difference between reality and fantasy. They can also analyze how Roald Dahl creates suspense and uses humor to make frightening situations more entertaining.

Halloween Activities

The Witches is particularly appropriate for Halloween lessons because witches are an important part of Halloween folklore and popular culture. Students can investigate how witches have been represented in stories, films, television, and other forms of entertainment.

A Halloween-themed reading activity can introduce students to new vocabulary related to magic, mystery, appearance, emotions, and storytelling. Teachers can also use selected scenes from the film adaptations to develop listening comprehension and encourage students to compare written and visual storytelling.

Popular Culture

Witches have appeared in literature, movies, television series, cartoons, video games, and folklore for centuries. The Witches therefore provides a useful starting point for discussing the representation of witches in popular culture.

Students can compare Roald Dahl’s witches with witches from other books and films and consider how their appearance, personality, powers, and role in the story are different. This creates opportunities for language practice while introducing students to literary and cultural concepts such as stereotypes, character development, fantasy, and adaptation.

ESL Teaching Resources for The Witches

A Reading Comprehension on The Witches can introduce students to Roald Dahl, the story, its characters, its themes, and its representation of witches. The activity can include comprehension questions, vocabulary exercises, and True or False statements that require students to justify their answers using information from the text.

The reading activity can also be accompanied by several writing activities. Students can write an essay expressing their personal opinion about The Witches, explaining whether they have already read the novel or watched one of its film adaptations and whether they liked it, supporting their opinion with reasons and examples. Another activity can ask students to choose a different book or film about witches, describe it, and compare its witches and story with Roald Dahl’s The Witches. A further writing task can explore the portrayal of witches in popular culture, encouraging students to discuss how witches are represented in different stories, films, television programs, or other media.

ESL Movie Guide: The Witches

Teachers can also use an ESL Movie Guide for The Witches, covering both the 1990 film directed by Nicolas Roeg and the 2020 film directed by Robert Zemeckis. Watching one or both adaptations gives students an opportunity to develop listening and viewing skills while exploring how the same story can be interpreted differently by filmmakers.

The Movie Guide can begin with a section for general information, where students record details such as the film director, release year, genre, main characters, setting, and other important information about the movie.

A New Vocabulary Learned section can help students record unfamiliar words and expressions encountered while watching the film. Students can write definitions, synonyms, translations, or example sentences, turning the movie into an authentic source of English vocabulary.

The Characters' Description section can ask students to describe the main characters, including their physical appearance, personality, relationships, motivations, and role in the story. This activity is particularly useful for practicing adjectives and descriptive language.

A Movie Timeline section can focus on sequencing and comprehension. Students are given important scenes from the movie and asked to place them in chronological order. This encourages careful listening and helps students demonstrate their understanding of the plot.

Students can then complete a Your Favourite Scene activity. They describe a scene from the movie and explain why they liked it, focusing on characters, events, emotions, dialogue, atmosphere, or visual elements.

The Movie Review section gives students the opportunity to evaluate the film through writing. They can summarize the story, discuss the acting and characters, describe their favourite aspects of the movie, and explain whether they would recommend it to another student.

The Movie Guide can also include a creative Diary Writing Activity. Students imagine that they are a character they personally liked and write three diary pages describing three different scenes from that character's perspective. This encourages students to use first-person narration, past tenses, emotions, descriptive vocabulary, and imagination while demonstrating their understanding of the story.

Novel Study: The Witches

A Novel Study on The Witches can complement the reading comprehension and movie activities. Students can explore the development of the plot, important characters, themes, settings, vocabulary, and memorable scenes while reading the novel.

The Novel Study can also encourage students to compare the original book with the 1990 and 2020 film adaptations. This allows them to consider how directors transform a written story into a visual experience and how characters, scenes, settings, and details can change during a film adaptation.

By combining reading comprehension, vocabulary, creative writing, movie analysis, and cultural discussion, The Witches becomes much more than a Halloween-themed story. It can serve as a flexible ESL teaching resource for developing English skills while engaging students with literature, film, fantasy, and popular culture.

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