Halloween Costumes for English Teachers

I love to celebrate holidays in my English classroom! For Halloween, I always teach Halloween-themed lessons and dress up in a fun costume. But it’s not always easy to think of good teacher costumes that are both creative and appropriate. So I made this list for inspiration.

Here are 21 book-themed Halloween costumes for English teachers.

Bookmark – create a large bookmark you can wear!
Book – enlarge your favorite book printout or print out a variety of your favorite books (or your students’ favorite books).
Bookshelf – create a personal or classroom library bookshelf with printouts of students’ favorite book spines.
Library shelf – create a library bookshelf with printouts of your favorite book spines.
Page of a book – grab a book that’s already falling apart, tear the pages out (gasp!), and put them together. Create a costume out of it, or just pin the individual pages to your clothes.
Starbooks “Starbucks”- re-create the Starbucks symbol but with “Starbooks” wording.
Bookworm – wear a worm (regular or glow-worm) and grab your favorite book!
Bookends – this costume would be really cute to do with your ELA teacher bestie! Create some fun bookends to frame around yourselves.
Dewey Decimal system – wear a big black dot (decimal) and spray face with water (to be “dewey”)
Library card – re-create your local or city library card as a frame around you.
NYC Library Lion- grab a mane and your favorite book for this iconic lion that represents New York City’s vast public library organization.
Grammar – either choose your favorite punctuation and print out a big version of it or print out computer-paper-sized versions of all punctuation and pin them to yourself.
Reading in bed (flashlight with a book) – drape a blanket around yourself, put pajamas and slippers on, grab a flashlight and your favorite book. You are your favorite pastime for Halloween!
E-Reader – print out an e-reader frame and either put your favorite book cover (print-out) in it, or hold it around yourself. You could also dress as your favorite book character within the frame.
Book and a snack – find your favorite book, favorite snack, drape a blanket around yourself, put some slippers on, and voila!
Specific book cover – choose your favorite book cover and either print it out and pin to yourself, or dress like your favorite book cover.
Specific book character – Among other Halloween costumes for English Teachers, this idea is a true classic! Choose your favorite book character and dress like them. Examples: Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games; Mrs. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus; Alice or the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland; Rainbow Fish from The Rainbow Fish; Madeline from Madeline; Greg Heffley from Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Audiobook – wear headphones and hold a book, or wear headphones and a printout of a phone showing a specific audiobook.
Cookbook – print out your favorite cookbook, or hold your favorite cookbook, and wear a chef’s hat and outfit.
Banned books – either print out a “censored” sign with caution tape over a book (or yourself), or printouts of banned books or do both.
Copycat – dress up like a cat and then make the computer keyboard buttons CTRL and C.

Need Rigorous and Fun Halloween Lessons?

This engaging Halloween Unit contains 5 different activities that will help reinforce your students’ reading and writing skills. Students will learn about the historical background of Halloween traditions and prepare for a Halloween discussion about current Halloween customs. This resource contains individual PDFs of student pages to assist with online learning i.e. Google Classroom™. The unit also comes with Google Slides™ versions of the included graphic organizers for 1:1 technology schools. Find this resource on Shopify CAD or Teachers Pay Teachers USD.

Unit Overview