Lesson Plan: A Cooking Recipe

It’s a vocabulary and TBL lesson based on this authentic blog post: Super Creamy Vegan Mushroom Sauce Pasta. Originally, it was designed for a 121 lesson, but it can be easily adapted to a group one. It’s good for any student(s), but especially for those who LOVE cooking 🙂

Level: B1+ and higher
Objectives: to introduce a set of useful lexical items for reading (and understanding) and writing cooking recipes; to provide practice in writing cooking recipes
The ultimate goal: to write and publish a cooking recipe of student’s choice
Duration: 1.5-2 hours
Materials: The Recipe, Gap-fill
Procedure:

0. LEAD-IN

1. Show the picture of the dish (can be found in the original blog post) and ask what ingredients the student thinks it has.
2. Then show the picture of raw ingredients (can be found in the original blog post) and ask the student to name each of them (you’ll most likely need to introduce spices, nutritional yeast and cornstarch).

I. READING & VOCABULARY

1. The student reads through the first page of The Recipe (ingredients).
2. Drag their attention to the words in yellow and ask to google ounces to grams; then elicit (or explain) what tBsp and tsp mean.
3. The student looks at the photos of the stages and puts them in the right order (jamboard).
   Alternatively, you can add all photos into a folder on Google Drive and ask your student to rename them using appropriate numbers.
4. The student reads through the steps (the second page of The Recipe), matches the photos to the stages and checks their answers.
5. Vocabulary focus (words and expressions in yellow): ask the student to decipher the meaning of each word using the photos of the stages from the re-ordering task. Only help if they struggle. We did it through my student’s L1 because that’s the way she likes it – and, to be honest, so do I. L1 is a powerful tool, and it’s not a secret that adult L2 learners do learn foreign languages through their L1 so no need to ignore it.
   Alternatively, you can send the list to your student in advance and ask them to check the meaning using a dictionary and find pictures on the Internet to illustrate each item (if possible), i.e. do it in a flipped-classroom way. In this case, during the lesson, you’ll have more time to focus on pronunciation and form.
6. Gap-fill task to practise the use of the new words and expressions.

II. TASK

1. The student thinks of a simple dish they know how to cook and makes a list of words they’ll need to describe the recipe (can be bilingual).
2. They use a dictionary to find the English translation for the words in L1 – double-check they got it right!
3. The student then writes a draft of the recipe.
4. Give feedback on content and accuracy.

III. Homework

The student writes the full recipe and adds some pictures (if they wish, they can cook the dish and take photos of it).

You’ll have to check it and provide feedback. The student then edits the recipe according to your feedback until it’s perfect.

The final stage: help your student to register at some English recipe website to publish their recipe (e.g. allrecipes.com or yummly.com).

Optional homework for passionate cooks: the student tries to cook the super creamy vegan mushroom sauce pasta and shares their impression (their family members and friends are also invited!) 🙂

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