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Tag: traditional food

RU F21 INT: Russian Cuisine

Language Resident Name: Aleksandra Bystrova

Date: 11/16/2021

Class theme/topics discussed: Russian Cuisine

Goal of the class:

  • Talk about most famous Russian meals
  • Learn vocabulary about cooking
  • Prepare for a cooking class

How did you structure the class?

  1. Warm up (5 mins)
    I ask my students to discuss the following questions in pairs:
    1) Which traditional Russian meals do you know?
    2) Have you ever tried Russian cuisine? What was your experience like?
    3) Have you ever been to a Russian restaurant?

2. Activity 1. Do you know this meal? (10 minutes)
I show my students pictures of the most famous meals and ask them to guess names or ingredients.

3. Activity 2. Cooking Vocabulary (10 mins)
I show my students a PowerPoint slide with cooking vocabulary and ask if they know those words. I prepared a handout for them with those words.

4. Activity 3. Game: Describe an action (10 mins).
After that, I ask my students to come in front of the class and show a cooking action without using words. Other students should guess what they are showing. Then they change.

5. Activity 4 (20 mins)
I divide my students into two groups and ask them to choose one meal that is easy to cook. They should write a recipe on a board using the vocabulary they learnt. Then they present their recipe and we vote for the meal that the majority would like to try. Next class we will cook the meal using their recipe.

What worked well in this class? What did not work?

The class went well. Food is one of the most favorite topics of my students since they had been asking me to talk about Russian cuisine or cook something from the very beginning of the semester. This class is good for practicing the vocabulary dedicated to food and cooking. It also includes the cultural element.

How could this class be improved/ modified?

I would leave it as it is. This class was created with the help of the Spanish language resident Natalia Cano. You can include an activity, where students should describe a picture to practice food and cooking vocabulary.

ES F21 INT Food and Beverages I

Language Resident: Franco Rivas Quiroz

Level: Intermediate

Class theme/topic discussed: Food and beverages I

Goal of the class

Students will be able to:

  • Describe different kinds of food and ingredients.
  • Use food vocabulary and expressions to indicate place (encima, al lado de, sobre, debajo de, etc.)

Class structure:

Warm up:

Students see an image of different kinds of foods and answer the question: “¿what’s your favorite food/restaurant?”

Activities:

-Students see images of Chilean traditional food and beverages  (cazuela, humitas, empanadas, mote con huesillo, leche asada, terremoto) and mention the ingredients that they think they might have, how they think it could be prepared and whether it looks similar to a plate from another country or culture.

-“¿Qué comida es?”: Each student gets small pieces of paper that can have either an image, name of a meal or a description on it. They go around the room and try to exchange information with their classmates in order to match each image with the name of the plate and its description. Some of them are the ones that were shown before and some others were new.

-“Encuentra las diferencias”: Students get a sheet of paper with the image of a man in a kitchen. Some of them got the A form and others the B form. Both have a similar image on it, but many of the elements in the image are different. Without seeing their classmate’s sheet, they ask questions to them in order to find out what the differences are. (for example: “hay un trozo de queso al lado del vaso de leche?”)

Wrap up:

Students remember the Chilean food that they learned about and talk about which one they would eventually like to try and why.

Resources used: Projector, laptop, pieces of paper.

Reflection: What worked/did not work? How can it be improved?

Students seemed to like the topic about food and asked questions about Chilean food. One of my students has Mexican relatives and we realized that there were some plates that were similar, although they differ in aspects of how they are made or the ingredients. We also spent some time talking about the vocabulary difference of some ingredients (for example “porotos” vs “frijoles” or “choclo” vs “maiz”). The activity in which they had to ask questions about the other person’s image also worked well and it gave them the chance to ask questions about prepositions and more vocabulary. 

What was a little bit more challenging were the descriptions of food on the sheet of paper. They ended up doing it well, but it took them a while to understand everything, so they asked questions on vocabulary and expressions. Maybe a simpler version of those descriptions could have worked better, but at the same time, I think that the little challenge that they had could also have been helpful, since it wasn’t extremely hard for them.

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