Having taught at different schools over the years, one theme my teenagers always seem to enjoy is… Food. Sounds about right? So, “Food Talk” is a big component of my YEAR 1 curriculum because it is interesting to students. I am particularly excited about where my students and I took this cultural unit this past year: we actually used our e-pals to help us answer the essential question!

Essential Question

Myth-buster: Do French kids really eat healthier than we do? 

Student objectives: Can-Dos

Summative assessment

I don’t usually recommend full IPAs for Novice learners; IPAs tend to be thematic and force students to focus on specialized language, which is more appropriate for Intermediates. I prefer to give broad language to my Novice learners, and keep the assessments simple. However, as an end-of-year summative assessment, this worked really well. I was impressed with what students could do! 

If you want to take a look at the IPA and rubrics, please click here.

Classroom tasks and activities

Here are the tasks and activities we did, broken down by communication mode. Feel free to reuse, modify, or ignore. 

The highlight of the unit was for my students to brainstorm questions about someone’s eating habits. We then interviewed their social study teacher who spoke French (i.e. someone familiar), then a francophone friend of mine, and finally our e-pals! After a whole year of receiving rich comprehensible input, it was so fun to watch them use their communication skills!!

My students interviewing their e-pals over Skype