I love cooking with EFL ESL kids classes. It’s a fantastic way to get kids learning vocabulary about food and actions as well as helping them learn a useful life skill.
You can adapt an EFL ESL cookery class with children to a wide range of different topics and it doesn’t just have to be straight up following a recipe. Think outside of the box; there are lots of subjects that you could include in a class including food preparation. These could range from farming and the environment right through to preparing food for holidays and feast days and learning about different countries and their cultures.
You don’t need a lot of fancy equipment either. I am a great believer that simple is best and you will be surprised at what you can whip up with very little equipment. These are some of the thoughts that I have come up with over the years when cooking with EFL ESL Kids classes, I hope they’ll give you some new ideas too.
Remember that learning English is the most important part of your lesson when cooking with EFL ESL classes
Unless you are specifically teaching a cookery class for kids that is coincidentally in English, those kids are there to learn English not to learn cooking. So this should always remain the most important part of your lesson. The cooking is an activity to back up the English learning and to practice speaking English. Make a lesson plan as you would for any other lesson and make sure you know what vocabulary and grammatical points you want to teach or practice in that lesson. The practical cookery part of the lesson should be a way to practice what you have learned. If you want to see some ideas of how to do this, have a look at my Making Pizza lesson or Preparing Fruit Salad lesson plan.
Use songs to learn vocabulary about food and cooking
There are lots and lots of fun songs available to learn and sing about food and cooking. Make sure you have at least one of these with is relevant to your class. Songs always make learning vocabulary easier and more natural and kids will remember them especially if it has a funny video to accompany it or funny actions to do. You can learn it at the beginning of the class and sing it together and then listen to it again while you are actually doing the food preparation. It will be what the kids remember after the class along with the vocabulary and the actions you have learned. If you want some ideas for songs about food, have a look at my Top 10 Food Songs.
Choose a good topic and a related recipe
As I said in the introduction, you can teach about food in the context of so many different topics. Off the top of my head now, I can easily think of about 10. You could make a recipe during lessons about: Traditional British food, food for Christmas, Halloween food, farming and where our food comes from, how to grow a plant, fruits and where they come from, Thanksgiving food, colors and textures, food I like and food I don’t like, what food animals eat, my family. And that’s just a quick selection. Once you have your subject matter, then find a related recipe that you can make in class.
Keep it simple and be prepared!
This is my rule for all my classes, especially those with very small children. Simple is always best especially when cooking with ESL EFL kids classes. Make sure you know exactly what you will be doing and have all the equipment and ingredients you need. It would be terrible to get half way through a recipe and then realize you’re missing a vital ingredient. There is no need to try and make anything very elaborate with a class of kids. As we said before, the important part is really the English, not the five courses full Christmas dinner. Even the most simple dish can be fun and useful to make in class. If you don’t believe me, have a look at my Make a Sandwich lesson plan.
Don’t forget about food allergies or food restrictions
There will be almost certainly children in your classes who have allergies or who do not eat certain foods for religious or cultural reasons. So before you make any final decisions about what you want to cook in class, do check thoroughly with parents and the school. You may have to change your plans but if it means everyone can fully participate and that there is no danger of anyone becoming ill or not being able to eat the food, it is definitely worth making the effort.
You don’t need to cook if you don’t have an oven
Don’t panic if you don’t have anywhere to heat up or cook food. You can make lots of different foods that you don’t need to cook at all. Or find a way to adapt a recipe using food that has already been cooked.
For example, if you really want to make pizza, you could teach all about the different toppings and how to make it. Instead of actually cooking a pizza though, you could use a base of pitta breads or some other kind of flat bread and put toppings on so it looks like a pizza. Not authentic I know, but it gets the ideas over to the kids and lets them have a go at making something too.
Instead of making a hot soup, you could make learn about vegetables and chop them up and then make a gazpacho or a vegetable smoothie. Use your imagination and adapt your ideas to your environment and what you have available.
You don’t need lots of fancy equipment or ingredients
Along the same kind of lines, you really don’t need specialist tools or ingredients when you are cooking with children. They are kids! They’re interested in things that taste good and things that are fun to make. Pinterest is your friend here. There are so many ideas about things to cook with kids that you can adapt to a class. You don’t need to spend lots of money on hard to find ingredients. Do you have a banana or other fruit and some chocolate or some bread and sandwich toppings, plus a plate and a knife? Then there are lots of ways you could adapt these ingredients to make a practical activity.
What about online classes?
I think a cooking class would be a great activity to do online. It will take some organization as you’ll need to make sure that everyone has the ingredients if you want the class to cook along with you. You’ll also need the collaboration of parents especially with very young classes. But why not? It could be a fun activity to do together. If there is no way your kids can cook along with you, then do the cooking part as a demonstration. Do the rest of the lesson first and then get them to tell you what you need to do and what ingredients you need to add. This would be a great way of practicing imperatives and recipes.
Get parents involved
Cooking with a class of kids can be chaotic. So if you have some parents who want to volunteer to come and help, accept them with open arms. You will also need to give the parents plenty of notice if they need to provide ingredients of equipment. Cooking can also be messy. Warn them in advance that their children will need an apron or clothes that won’t be ruined if they spill something on them. Let everybody know beforehand that you’re planning a cooking class. This way you or they won’t have any nasty surprises on the day.
Don’t forget to have fun!
When you’re in the middle of a classroom covered in flour and surrounded by kids enthusiastically cutting out and decorating cookies, it can be a bit overwhelming. Try and relax, keep everyone and everything calm and enjoy yourself. The children will be thrilled with what they’ve made even if they’re not the beautifully perfect cookies that you were hoping. The parents will be pleased too. And hopefully they’ve all learned an awful lot of English in that lesson. They will remember it for a long time as they had so much fun. A successful lesson!
I hope this has given you some ideas about ESL EFL cooking with kids. Or maybe some reassurance if it was something you wanted to try but were hesitating. If you’ve enjoyed this article and want to read some more teaching ideas, you can find them all here. Have a look at my lesson plans too if you’re looking for some inspiration. To keep up to date with new articles, teaching ideas and lesson plans, you can follow the GoogooEnglish Facebook page or sign up for email updates below. Happy cooking everyone!