Cooking... inside the classroom?

What if we turned our common classroom into a restaurant? Maybe not literally. But doing some class this way, could be interesting. How and why? Let's talk about it.

Firstly, motivation is a very important element in education and teaching. It's been proven through years that just listening, repeating and jotting down in their notebooks the stuff that pupils learn at class is not the best way to motivate them. So, for example, when we talk about food and cooking, wouldn't it be better to make practical lessons rather than theory? Also, it's funnier for children.

There is a wide range of activities that can be done, however, we are focusing now on creating and cooking a selfmade recipe. How would this activity work? To start with it, children should be divided into groups in which they will work together. Once divided, the teacher could revise some basic food vocabulary before they start working, nonetheless, this can be skipped. Then, the groups would write down their recipe and, here's the main point, they would try to cook it and present it to the rest of the class. The cooking day can be done a different day so that they can buy the ingredients, and of course, we should limit them to easy stuff, they can't bake a cake in a class.

With this activity, we make them revise food and cooking vocabulary, also we make them talk since they have to discuss a recipe and show it to their classmates. And moreover, we make them cook. Since nowadays it is important to correlate subjects and encourage students' autonomy, letting them cook by themselves is something useful.

To sum up; we have an activity to make a different class, motivating students not only to use their English, but also trying to do things they may not be used to do (like cooking). Therefore, trying out new and innovative stuff is definitely something that we should try to do in the future, encouraging our students to learn in a different way. And making a restaurant out of a classroom can be a good start.