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[babala]

I've been teaching food classes for years now and I'm getting bored of the way I do it. There's nothing wrong with what I'm doing but I just want to change things up.

Any ideas??

[old34]

So how have you BEEN doing it?

[ericthered]

Yeah, what he said...if you tell us what you are bored with, then we can spice things up and get cooking

[kitano]

I always enjoyed the complaining at a restaraunt game

You introduce food and ordering and so on and introduce polite and impolite speech then in twos or threes they role play a restaraunt ordering food and so on. You also prepare a bunch of strips of card with problems on them and they have to complain and respond to the problems in polite and impolite ways

The fun is that you can give them really silly problems if they are confident enough, start them off with easy problems like too much salt or the food is cold etc but if it goes well you can give them nightmare customer problems like the table is the wrong height or the fish looks unhappy or nightmare restaraunt problems like someone has spat in my food etc

[Borkya]

I once did a food role playing game, and I had to explain how to eat the various foods, "You have a hamburger, you eat it with your hands. You have pasta, you use a fork and spoon."

One boy ordered fish and I told him, "you eat fish with a fork and knife." he looked at me aghast and said, "How?!" 

[kitano]

Another super lazy one is to go to a medium size restaraunt and get a copy of their menu and tell your students to find and correct all of the mistakes that they made translating it into English while you nurse your hangover

[Raoul F. Duke]

When I was teaching hotels, I got photos of basic foods and a few popular dishes from the internet, then printed them off in color and had them laminated for re-use. I also added a few props like steak doneness markers. Then it was easy to "place an order" and make them bring me the right foods.

It took a bit of work and investment, but it worked great!

[babala]

Okay guys, you called me on my laziness when I posted this thread

I do a few different things right now

1) I put them into small groups and give each one a food group (fruit, meat...) and then have them write as many words they know for the group. I give them a few minutes and then switch their lists around and they then have to add to the others list.

2) I have them practice describing Chinese dishes to a foreigner. I teach them ingredients, taste and cooking method.

3) I take a English menu and then go through it for vocabulary and then put into groups and have them role play trading off the diner and waiter roles.

4) I give them a list of vocabulary for cooking and then after we go through it, we play charades with them and then they take turns acting out the methods/preparations and the others guess the words.

5)  I first give each one an idiom and have them try to guess what it means then I explain them.

6) We discuss kinds of restaurants and talk about restaurant etiquette and table settings.

Anything else???

[kitano]

Write a recipe

[tomhume89]

I got tonnes of ingredients on a piece of paper, cut them up and put them into a hat. They were split into groups and then picked 5 or so ingredients and had to make a recipe and give it a name. The recipes were always... interesting.. like fish head and banana sandwich.

Another one I did with my junior 2s was, as they were learning a process (first...then...next...finally), was to get them to write a disgusting recipe. The kids loved it as it went against the usual "write how to make a super sandwich". Had things like stinky tofu milkshake, or smelly socks surprise.