"Menu" in year 4 08.02.13

During this week, year 4 students have been learning new food vocabulary. In their Surprise! book they could find some activities in order to memorize the new words but, despite that, I thought that an extra activity related to this topic would help the kids to consolidate the vocabulary.

The activity I planned was called "Menu" so children have been designing a set of dishes of a restaurant. Two weeks ago I asked the students to bring some supermarket leaflets in order to cut some pictures of food out and then stick them on their menus. 

I started the lesson showing to the kids an example of a menu. The menu was composed of: starter, main course, dessert and drink options, so they had to write their meal plan including all of these sections. Then, I divided the class into groups, so children worked in groups of three students. Right after I explained the process of the creation of the menu: first write the dishes, then find the appropriate pictures and finally, decorate the menu with a coloured sheet of paper.

Before putting in practise this activity I thought it was going to take just one lesson, but I was mistaken. Kids started the activity this week and they are going to continue the next one in order to finish their crafts. 

I saw children very excited doing this exercise. They love cutting out, creating crafts, designing...Children are naturally creative so we should offer to them open activities to develop their artistic skills. Usuallyy the book's activities are so closed so students just have to copy something and write the unique and appropriate answer. In exchange we have more creative activities like the "Menu" where there is not just a correct solution. There are a lot of possibilities that kids can write and most of them are right. 

The activity also contributed to encourage children to discover new words, to be curious and to look for them in the dictionary. During the lesson I could see how kids learned new vocabulary in a different way so we spent a great and profitable time.