Food's always good (Making Recipes)

Sonia Ho

PROCEDURE:

1. The theme of the lesson is food and to get students ready for this particular class, they have to first learn some cooking terms and expand their vocabulary of cooking utensils and food (vocabulary sheets, matching exercises with pictures and instructions are great; if you have time, do actual demonstrations or show students a cooking show back home).
2. On the day when students actually make recipes, show them examples from recipe books or recipes cut out from newspapers or magazines.
3. Give them each a worksheet. The worksheet is divided in half. On the left hand side, there should be space for students to draw a picture of their dish (stress that they should draw the picture last, only when they have time). Below the picture, students should list out the ingredients. On the right hand side, students should write down the procedures
4. Walk around class to help students as they make their recipes. Encourage them to use original recipes (the way they do things at home, special recipes from their mothers or grandmothers etc.).
5. At the end, have students present their recipes (Since there were little time left in my class, I incorporated the recipe activity into a skit and had students do it for oral test).

NOTES:

I teach in a low level school, but this activity is surprisingly manageable for my students. Even the low level students manage to do it without having to write things down in Japanese first. Students also seemed to be rather interested in the activity, though I do teach in an all girls school... My JTE put all the recipes together at the end and made a class recipe book, which I thought was a fabulous idea.