Food and cooking

Objective & content

This sheet on recipes, kitchen tools and cooking verbs opens on a conversation: Maya and Tom bake chocolate cupcakes for the school cake sale, then make lunch while the cakes are in the oven. Every target word is in it first, from weigh, scales and mixing bowl to stir, peel and fry. By the end, pupils can read a simple recipe and give its steps.

Pedagogical guide

The tasks go from understanding the words to using them: six multiple-choice questions on the conversation, six kitchen tools to name from a box of eight, eight words to match with their meanings and ten sentences to complete. On page 3, pupils name six cooking verbs from pictures, then finish a pancake recipe where each gap is a choice between three words; the words around each gap settle it (you break raw eggs, you pour a liquid, you fry in a pan). It is the hardest task. Grammar stays on the A2 floor (imperatives, present simple, need to, can) and is never tested.

Suggested procedure

1. (5 min) Ask what pupils need to make a cake; write their answers on the board.
2. (10 min) Read the conversation aloud in pairs, one pupil as Maya, one as Tom, then answer the six questions.
3. (10 min) Page 1 pictures and page 2: name the tools, match the meanings, complete the sentences.
4. (10 min) Page 3: the cooking verbs, then the pancake recipe.
5. (10 min) Correct with the answer key on page 4; pupils read the recipe aloud with the right words.

Adaptations

[S] A pupil mimes a cooking verb (chop, stir, pour) and the class guesses it before page 3.

[A] In pairs, pupils explain how to make a sandwich in five steps ("First, ... Then, ...").

Materials & prerequisites

One copy per pupil of the three pupil pages, in colour or black and white. Page 4 is the answer key with teacher notes: keep it. The names of food (6ème) are assumed. To take it further, pupils write the recipe of a dish from their family and the class makes a recipe book.