Monster Mash Primary School Dance Lesson Plan

This Halloween-themed dance lesson is a great way to engage your class in purposeful movement while developing key dance skills such as rhythm, travelling, and stillness. Designed with busy teachers in mind, the Monster Mash routine is simple to follow and comes with all the resources you need for a full session. It’s part of our wider Primary School Dance Resources, created to support confident delivery of high-quality dance lessons across the curriculum.

For printable resources, including choreography notes, download the free Monster Mash Lesson Plan PDF.

Image of a monster from mnster mash

Dance Scheme of Work:

Title: The Monster Mash – A Halloween dance scheme.

Aim of session: Build a simple Halloween Monster-style dance routine based on the basic movements of dance – Travelling, Turning, Stillness, Falling, and Jumping.

Key words: Zombie, Werewolf, Vampire, Mummy, Ghost.

Length of session: 40 minutes.

Resources: The original song The Monster Mash, a large ventilated space and provision for water breaks.

Warm-up Activity (5 minutes)

1. Introduction to Beat and Rhythm

  • Focus the children, sit them in a semi-circle, and play The Monster Mash.
  • Introduce the slow beat: clapping in time to a regular beat (8 claps per phrase of 8 counts of music).

2. Practice clapping to the beat of the music.

Main Activity (20-25 minutes)

  1. Arrange the children standing in their own space. Play the song again and bob up and down to the beat.
  2. Practice being zombies walking slowly in time to the music.
  3. Practice doing The Twist in time to the music.
  4. Teach the actions to the song using the choreography notes.
  5. Enjoy practicing the performance as many times as you like!

Encourage big, strong movements and good posture. Praise good performances for other children to watch and copy.

You can split the class so children can watch and learn from each other’s performances.

Cool-down Activity (2 minutes)

  • Walk around the room stretching arms above the head.
  • Perform a full-body stretch walking on tiptoes (hold for 10 seconds).
  • Perform a standing cat stretch to stretch the spine (hold for 10 seconds).
  • Shake the body, sit in a semi-circle with good posture, and discuss what was learned.

Download the free Monster Mash Lesson Plan PDF for printable resources.

Plenary

Observe children’s ability to clap in time with the music.

Observe children’s ability to perform actions correctly with the song.

Discussion Questions:

What have we learned in this session?

What could we improve on next time?

More Resources

This is part of our Primary school dance resource package

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