The sequence suggested here is based on ideas from worksheet 12 at ciep.fr You may also like to look at www.primlangues.education.fr (Click on Ressources, Séquences Pédagogiques, La nourriture et les repas.)
The sequence is aimed at students who are in their second year of English, for whom stages 1, 2 and 3 involve revision, but if you want to use this material with beginners, you can spend more time on the early stages and leave out stage 4 or return to it in a later lesson.

The aims of this lesson are:

• To develop students’ understanding of and ability to use food related vocabulary

• To enable the students to talk about likes and dislikes

• To enable them to ask one another about likes and dislikes

• To show students how grids can be used to represent information

• To give them experience of pairwork for information transfer.

Language:

Food vocabulary. The following are suggestions but you can also look at the PrimLangues food page. Chicken, chips, cheese, chocolate, ice cream, apples, soup, salad, pizza, oranges, bananas, spinach, fish, carrots.

Structures: I like/I don’t like. Do you like? Yes I do/No I don’t.

Materials:

• Flashcards to illustrate the food words you have chosen

• Blutak or magnets

• Flashcards of a smiling face and an unhappy face (3 or 4 of each)

• A blank grid for each student.

Check out the website of the week clipart for busy teachers to find flashcards.



Stage 1: Introducing or revising the vocabulary

• Show the flashcards (a maximum of ten for non-beginners, five, at first, for beginners) and either elicit the word or teach it, encouraging choral and individual repetition.

• Stick a smiling face flashcard (mouth turned up) on the board, next to the chocolate flashcard and say, 'I like chocolate'. Use mime to emphasize your meaning.

• Ask students in the class 'And you?' Elicit 'I like chocolate too.' Repeat this with other food words.

• Then stick the sad face flashcard (mouth turned down) next to a food flashcard and say 'I don’t like soup', again using mime and exaggeration to convey your meaning.

• Ask the students 'And you?' They can respond with either 'I like soup' or 'I don’t like soup'. You may find that your pupils like everything, but spinach and fish may be less popular.

Before moving on to stage two, you may like to check that they recognize the food words. Number the flashcards on the board, and ask the students to hold up the number of fingers corresponding to the word you say. 'What number is cheese?' The students hold up three fingers, if cheese is number three. You can hand over to the students fairly quickly; they love coming to the front of the class and taking over from the teacher!

You can also make this a more challenging activity by turning the flashcards over so that the students can’t actually see the pictures. You will find that they have excellent visual memories!



Stage 2: Using a grid on the board to represent information

• Quickly draw the following simple grid on the board. Draw pictures instead of writing words, and write the name of the first student you question.

• Ask; 'Do you like apples, Marie?' If Marie says 'Yes' (you can encourage the students to reply using 'Yes I do, No I don’t') fill in a smiling face in the appropriate place on the grid.

When you have filled in two or three faces, you can hand over to the students, getting them first to fill in the faces, and then to ask the questions.



Stage 3: A quick comprehension check.

• Point to the grid on the board and ask the students to raise both arms if you make a true statement and to keep their arms folded if what you say is not true. Demonstrate before asking them to do the activity.

• Then say;
  'Delphine likes apples.' Students raise both arms if the statement is true.
  'Martin doesn’t like fish.' Students raise both arms if the statement is true.
  'Pierre likes ice cream.' Students keep arms folded if the statement isn't true.

• You can again hand the game over to the students and get them to make the statements.

Stage 4: Group work

The students work in pairs, groups of three where you have an odd number of students in the class.

• Hand out a worksheet with a blank grid. Tell the students to choose four kinds of food and write the words in the grid. It is important for pairs to choose the same food items. If you want this to be a more controlled activity, you can specify the food items. Demonstrate first on the board.

• They write their own name and draw smiling or sad faces in the appropriate place on the grid if they like or dislike the food they have chosen.

• They then write their partner’s name on the second line of the grid. Each in turn tells their partner whether they like or dislike the food and the partner draws a happy or sad face in the appropriate space on the grid.

• They then compare their grids to see if they have understood the information they were given. They obviously should have identical grids.

Remember to demonstrate the activity with a student first, then ask for a pair to demonstrate so that everyone knows what is expected.



Stage 5: Review

You can do one of the following:

• Ask students to volunteer to 'read' their grid. 'I like chocolate.' 'I don’t like fish'.

• The students can play a guessing game based on their grids. One student comes to the front with this grid. Students from the group have to guess what food he/she likes. 'Do you like fish?' 'Do you like ice cream?' The first student to guess correctly takes over.

Follow up options:

1. The students may already know a song or chant about food which you can ask them to sing.
If not, you may like to quickly teach the following words to the tune of 'Frère Jacques'.

I like chicken, I like chicken,
Chicken and chips, chicken and chips,
Cheese and chocolate, cheese and chocolate,
Ice cream too, ice cream too.

2. Encourage the students to invent alternative words or use Puzzlemaker.com (one of the past websites of the week) to devise a wordsearch for the students, with a hidden message to make it more fun.

3. PrimLangues has other ideas such as writing a menu or shopping list. These can be illustrated and displayed.

by Angela Ferrare