Bon Appétit

EXPANDING OUR CULTURE - HOW IT WORKS

Cooking crepes is highly enjoyable interdisciplinary program that helps students achieve performance standards in Foreign Language, Art, English Communication, Technology and Math. The finished product is a class culmination powerpoint presentation designed and produced by the students, as well as making and eating crepes. The students are infiltrated with foreign language vocabulary as well as culture from France, reading, writing and communication, technology, mathmetical and life skills.

The Bon Appetit lesson is implemented first by using an introduction to the French cuisine by taking a virtual tour through the computer. The students are given a very thorough and hands on approach to eating, cooking and life in France.

Cooperative groups are used for the majority of this lesson. By allowing the students to learn to work in teams where each team has a specific role, the students gain great self esteem as well as leadership expertises. Lessons used for this unit cover table setting vocabulary, er verbs, writing french dialouges as well as resturant conversational skills. The Mathmatical quantities are discussed by the ingredients needed. The different metric systems are highlighted and discussed as well. Upon completion of reviewing the crepe recepie, students are next asked to do a mini webquest on crepes, on the Internet, which is implemented in class. Students do this exercise in pairs. Students find out the region of origin, what types of crepes are made, as well as other cultural tidbits. They are asked to look at a crepe recepie and notice the ingredients, quantities and procedure used to make the crepes.

Once ample research has been done, the class is now ready for the hands- on portion of the lesson. Our main goal is to cook, create and eat our own crepes. The class will divided into teams. Each team is then given a task. All tasks are to be written on Large tablet paper and hung on classroom wall or easel. The teams in which my students gathered into were as follows: Set-up team, Recorder/Photographer team, Preparer Team, Filling team, Cooking team, Clean up team. Each teams function was amply disscused and each team knew exactly what their job was.

The next part of the lesson is where organizational skills and patience come into play. Each team breaks up into their appropriate jobs, and the mixing, preparing, cooking, filling and most importantly eating portion of the lesson is executed.

Finally, the last part of this project requires the class to create a Powerpoint presentation about the entire experience. Digital Photos will be included as well as personal or reflective essays about what the student has taken away from this diverse cultural experience!

THE STUDENTS

This lesson was used for my 8th grade special education class. The class consisted of 13 students from a variety of different countries. The students in this class had varied Language and intelligence levels as each of them has some sort of learning disability. Bon Appetite, hands on project was designed to provide students with a hands on learning experience as well as applying to Gardners 7 Theories of Intelligences, which permits students to actually produce something themselves allowing for a creative and positive learning process, while integrating the use of technology.

WHAT YOU NEED

The program requires use of a French Text Book for vocabulary purposes. A large quantity of this unit requires a computer, internet use and knowledge of powerpoint. Art supplies. A Digital Camera, To institute the cooking part of the project you might want to cooperate with the home economics department and let the students learn to make crepes in the school kitchen. In our case, our school is not equipped with a kitchen, therefore, we had to bring in our own cooking supplies: a portable range, frying pan, spatula, plates, cups, napkins and all supplies included in the recipe. As the teacher I took a trip to the supermarket to purchase all of the food items. If you were looking for a cross disciplinary lesson, the math teacher may want to take a class trip to the supermarket and allow the students to shop for the specific ingredients using a budget and teams.