Category: food

I love visiting IKEA and wondering around the children’s department as my attention is invariably grabbed by something I think I can use. It’s not often that a  specific lesson is ‘born’ as I browse, however.

Meet Señor Brócoli. Our eyes met and I was inspired!

I saw his pockets and thought of using him like a food triangle , filling his pockets with play food. And a lesson was formed, which was a bonus as I had a lesson observation looming and this was perfect!

I had adapted a presentation by Rachel Hawkes that she had shared on TES Resources previously for use with Year 4 in their unit on healthy eating but felt that it would work well with Year 6’s unit on food as well. The preceding week had been healthy eating week and we had made Wordles and Tagxedos of healthy eating vocabulary (they only had 40 minutes to find the words, type them in and print them so it wasn’t in great depth!) That was the starting point for the lesson.

We then played ‘ping pong’ with food vocabulary, seeing how long they could keep the rally up.

Having gone over pronunciation, pupils used the vocabulary from slide 3 cut into slips to classify vocabulary according to certain criteria using Tesoro o basura sheet; feminine nouns, plural nouns and finally healthy foods were the treasure.

The next step was to consider what healthy means as it’s not easy to decide definitively. That’s where Señor Brócoli came in. Using plastic play food, pupils ‘fed’ him, placing food in his pockets. The pocket into which they placed their food item corresponded to the frequency with which you should eat it – top pockets are smaller and correspond to a veces, the middle pocket to a menudo, and the bottom pocket to todos los días. The pupils all wanted to take part and say the appropriate phrase in Spanish.

They then classified the food in the triangle (slide 7)

I assigned each table a text from slide 8 to read, and encouraged them to ‘magpie’ useful phrases. They compiled lists together and then shared them with other groups.

The final part of the lesson was to write their own short text using slide 10.

If we had had more time, slide 11 was the extension activity with pupils suggesting food to match the definitions.

Pupils really enjoyed the lesson and didn’t want to go to lunch – and that’s very unusual. And it proved to be an outstanding observation too.

Throughout the lesson pupils RAG-ed their work using the fruit scale  – ¿eres un tomate, una naranja o una manzana? That was a hit too; much more appealing than traffic lights!

Señor Brócoli will appear again soon; Year 4 are looking at healthy lifestyles too!

Download the presentation – adapted from Rachel Hawkes’ PPT and with Tesoro o basura from LightBulb Languages La_Comida_sana_y_malsana final

Download lesson plan sano malsano lesson

Being stuck with my foot up is giving me plenty of time to read, think and play with my tech, and this morning a combination of the three inspired this post!

I was pinning away on Pinterest when I came across this ‘Pin’

I followed the link and as I looked at the article, I started thinking “How could I use this?”

So I started making a list

1. Compare the sweets eaten in France and UK. Are they the same?

2. Look at the names of the sweets e.g. les bouteilles de Coca, les bonbons au caramel. Could you understand these names without seeing the pictures? Test it by giving learners the images and the words separately and see if they can match them. Or ask “Qu’est-ce que c’est ‘Bottle’ en français?”

3. Look at ordinal numbers “le bonbon en première position est…?” “Dans quelle position est la fraise Tagada?” “Quelle est le bonbon en huitième place?”

4. Discuss likes and dislikes – “Tu aimes les bouteilles de Coca?” ” Tu préfères les Dragibus ou les Chamallows?” “Quel bonbon aimes-tu?” Encourage use of connectives e.g. “Je n’aime pas le Reglisse mais j’aime beaucoup les Schtroumpf”,  “J’aime les Chamallows mais je préfère les bouteilles de Coca.”

5. Conduct a survey. You could use the French sweets or find out about the learners’ likes and dislikes by asking for example “Tu préfères quel bonbon?”

6. Make a bar graph of the results and discuss “Combien d’enfants aiment les bonbons au caramel?”

7. You could use the above graph to talk about plus / moins (more and less) “Les Schtroumpf sont plus ou moins populaires que le nounours à la guimauve?” “Quel est le bonbon plus populaire?”

8. Talk about the colours of the sweets. I also found these really colourful lollipops that would be good.

Or you could use a packet of Smarties and count how many of each colour you get in each tube. (More opportunity to use plus/moins que)

9. Learners invent their own sweets! This could lead to recipes, labelling colours and shapes,  craft as they could make them out of clay/playdough, coloured paper, and even trying to sell them to their peers using persuasive language “Mes bonbons sont délicieux” “Oui, mais les sucettes sont plus savoureux” and so on10. And finally, as healthy lifestyles are important, perhaps linking sweets to thinks we should and shouldn’t eat, and foods that “bon pour la santé” Perhaps use a food triangle to add foods in the correct proportions with sweets at the very top! There are Spanish examples on my Pinterest Or you could make a poster  like this Spanish one  using Moins and Plus. And here are a few examples in French.

Click to download.

A collage of food.

This made me laugh!

I looked for a similar article in Spanish but couldn’t find one. However, I did find this video of Spanish sweets and chocolate

httpv://youtu.be/sFR82CUeDLI

I also came across this article that gives a list (and description) of types of sweets in Spanish and information on how to start a sweet shop!

And this board – Postres y dulces de España – on Pinterest so check it’s not blocked in school before you rely on using it in your lesson! It shows an example of a pastry or sweet from many regions and cities of Spain. Mouthwatering!

Whilst I didn’t find the 10 most popular sweets in Spain, I found some dangerous ones – Los 21 dulces más peligrosos (from USA so I hadn’t heard of lots of the sweets) talks about the sugar/fat/carbohydrate content of various sweets as well as hidden nuts and so on, and also this article on Halloween sweets

And I did find some popular Mexican ‘dulces’ (not quite the same as it includes all sorts of sweet treats not just sweets/candy)

5 dulces mexicanos más populares includes recipes as well as details of palanquetas, alegrías, glorias, ate and cocada.

And Los 10 dulces más típicos de México expands on the above giving some further examples of Mexican treats like cacahuetes garapiñados and mazapán.

So – what would YOU do? Please leave your ideas in the comments, or via Twitter @lisibo

Off to have dark chocolate Bounty now 😉 Délicieux!

Update!

I’ve made a PDF/PPT of the top ten French sweets-

Les top 10 bonbons PDF   Les top 10 bonbons PPT

Your ideas!

See slide 37 of Clare’s presentation for an idea of how she uses this site to support Maths skills.

And Erzsi replied too. I had to look up why she took in a Chupa Chup for Dalí so I learned something new too!

@lisibo excellent! I take a Mars bar in to intro days of the week, it links with planets. And a Chupa chups to talk to kids about Dali.

— Erzsi Culshaw (@Erzsiculshaw) April 25, 2014

And my husband has just come back from Mexico with these!

In what seems like a past life sometimes when I used to teach Spanish to secondary pupils, we used a text book called Vaya.  Apart from my gripe about their assertion that Spaniards have pets ‘grillos’ on their balconies (yet to meet one!), my other main problem with the book / course was the fact that the pictures looked nothing like what they were supposed to be illustrating, particularly the food.  The ‘churros’ looked like those posh butter curls you get on hoity toity places, and if I showed you the ‘paella’, you’d be hard pressed to identify it.

Not sure why I thought of it today (perhaps I had a nostalgic thought?) but I did, and it reminded me of this marvellous group on Flickr called Comida española which features over 2000 photos of Spanish food.

So much easier to explain ‘chocolate con churros’

or ‘albóndigas en salsa’

or the scale on which paella’s are sometimes cooked

when you have a decent picture to help you!

You can search the group – for example, ‘tapas’ or ‘garbanzos’ or ‘tortilla’

To finish, here’s a picture that might come in useful in the next week or so…

NB watch out for the CC license under which images are shared – some are All rights reserved which means they’re copyright.  Look for CC Attribution Share alike that you can use as long as you say to whom they belong.

PS if anyone has ever met a Spaniard with a pet ‘grillo’ could you please let me know!

I am a great fan of IKEA.

As I have shared before, I find it a goldmine for teaching resources.

On my latest visit, I made a couple of purchases-

1. finger puppets

Great for speaking tasks to encourage reluctant speakers, to encourage imagination and to ‘distract’ from repetitious or disliked activities.  This set add to my already large collection of animals, fairytale characters, sea creatures and other random puppets I’ve gleaned from parties, charity shops and toyboxes!

2. fruit and vegetable punnets

These were my favourite find this time.  Soft fruit – banana, grapes, kiwi, orange, apple and watermelon – and vegetables – leek, carrots, cucumber, mushrooms, garlic, tomatoes and lettuce- in a punnet / basket.

Just the thing for –

• discussing fruit and vegetables
• looking at colour
• talking about healthy eating
• giving opinions – I like / dislike and why
• reenacting stories – Handa’s Surprise, The Hungry Caterpillar – or writing your own

and I’m sure there are more things that could be done with them given more than 10 seconds thought!  If you’ve got any ideas, leave a comment below!

I’ve been looking for resources about healthy lifestyles and food today, and came across this song on my travels around Youtube.

Another useful video on the same theme, and with the same ‘quirk’ is the one below. This time it’s a rap that could easily be adapted to include other items of food, or other vocabulary too.