Lesson Plan Session 5: Food (C1.1) & Memories Pt. 2 (B2.2)

For the fifth session of classes my C1.1 level focused on the theme of Food while my B2.2 level continued on the previous week's theme focused of Memories.

C1.1- Restaurant Role Play

For this week's session I was given the theme of Food to work with. Remembering my own experience learning the vocabulary and common expressions behind these theme in Spanish, an activity one of my middle school teachers did with our class stuck out to me: Restaurant role play! Not only does this allow students to practice dining situations in real time, but it additionally gives students insight into American dining habits and customs.

For this activity, I created a list of dining situations with additional complications thrown into the mix to make my advanced section of students think and respond quicker and more creatively on the spot. After splitting into pairs, partners would first decide who would play the roles of A and B. Then the fun begins! The following are the different situations I posed to my students:

As partners discussed, I would walk around the room giving assistance on vocabulary or popular sayings while I wrote down in my notebook common questions or doubts my students had. Between checking on my students, I would begin to provide explanations to their questions and doubts on the whiteboard. These often included what was included in a full course American dinner, the word “party” when making a reservation, tipping habits in the USA, the difference between a waffle and a pancake, and the regional differences of what people call soft drinks in the US. Leaving 15-20 minutes towards the end of our lesson I would call the partners to join as a large group to discuss, ask more questions, and share experiences of what I had written on the board.

This activity exceeded my expectations whereby it not only allowed my students to think and act in response to real dining situations, but it also enriched their perspective on American dining culture. While some classes took the situations very seriously, others had a lot of fun acting out silly situations, ordering ridiculous meals, and pushing their partners out of their comfort zones.

B2.2 - It's Time for Jeopardy!

As it was the second week my B2.2 levels focused on the theme of Memory, it took awhile for me to come up with another lesson plan. However, over the course of the previous week’s activity centered around past events, I noticed many of my students misused verbs in the past tense or even substituted the present tense for the past. While these accidents were slight, I decided to create a fun recap of the past tense so that my students were able to hone their usage of the past...especially as their exams are coming up soon after the break!

That being said, for this lecture´s activity I took inspiration from my previous week´s C1.1 activity and created another game of Jeopardy! My game for can be found at https://jeopardylabs.com/play/past-simple-vs-past-continuous18. For this game, the categories included:

• Past Simple

• Past Continuous

• Past Simple - Past Continuous

• Interrupted

• Verbs in Simple Past

Working in teams, my students were able to discuss their answers and, most importantly, WHY their usage of the past was correct. While some of my students had a stronger grasp on the past tense and this activity proved a bit too easy for them, other students who struggled in previous weeks were able to learn from their peers to better understand when and how to use the correct tenses of the past. Once again this activity was a hit! Again I found that activities such as these that foster a sense of competition have proven to be extremely advantageous for my students. Not only do they talk more and are able to learn from one another, they get excited and have fun while doing so!