Luz, Camera, Comida!

Learning a language within the confines of a classroom can sometimes be a little...stale. To spice things up--and bring her skills and objectives to life for her students--Profe Teresa recently capped off her Spanish II unit by with a lively cooking project. Leading up to this project, students had learned how to describe food and give commands in the kitchen using their growing language skills. As part of this unit, Profe Teresa led two in-class cooking lessons, showing students how to make guacamole and fruit smoothies. Then, it was the students' turn to film their own original Spanish language cooking videos. Here is a taste of their creations:

Yasmeen Abusamaha, Josephine Chukwuani and Essence Hall-Dulin created a tortilla española, which is a typical Spanish breakfast or bar food. Josephine mixed it up a bit by using a Mexican sombrero as her chef’s hat.

Junius Johnson, Sara Bien-Amie and Titiana Robichaw were one of the groups that took advantage of Freire’s kitchen next door and created salsa de taco, a Mexican-inspired taco dip.

Bahsil Franklin worked solo, and created a batido de fresa y plátano. He clearly is comfortable both in front of and behind the camera, and added a soundtrack to make washing, cutting and blending fruit extra dramatic.

A great job by these and all the student chefs!

Profe Teresa is happy to share even more videos, swap recipe ideas or talk about the lessons that supported students to create these video projects. "Definitely reach out if you are interested in doing a video project with your students--and learn from my mistakes!" she says. She and five other Freire teachers will be doing a workshop with WHYY next week to learn more about integrating video projects into the classroom, and the group will be presenting at a future PD.