Mi Comida Favorita de Venezuela Final Project
Students will be required to create a VoiceThread presentation about a native dish of Venezuela. (This involves recording commentary that goes along with pictures.) This dish will be a cultural food used specifically during a certain time of year, holiday or celebration in Venezuela and it will be required that the students bring in a small dish for their classmates to try on their presentation day. This project will be done in pairs. In their presentation, they will have to describe how it is made by using present perfect tense. In a way, they will be telling the story of their food... how to make it, what it tastes like, cultural significances, etc. In class, we will watch each group's presentation and sample the cultural foods.
Cooking is done and enjoyed in every day life in Latin America. From an educator standpoint, this will shows their understanding of the unit materials. Students are often motivated by culture, especially food, so the students may be engaged to learn more in depth information about where and when they would expect to find their certain food, as well as how to make the food, because it may require different items than typical cooking in the United States. Students should be excited to sample different culturally-based food items.
Students will be required to listen to all of the groups' VoiceThreads online. They will then be required to comment on any part of each of the groups' VoiceThreads. We will require that each person speaks half the time in their posts and writes half the time in their posts (if you are familiar with VoiceThread this makes sense.) This will help students promote communicative language proficiency, as well listening and response skills. Another idea to keep mind is that many good conversations are started over food, especially in Latin America.
Students will need to know food vocabulary, such as certain spices, fruit, and basic cooking knowledge, such as the metric system (as that is what they use everywhere but the United States.) They will also have to know certain cultural backgrounds of Venezuela, such as when certain foods are used and why. They will have to research and decide on which recipe they will want to use for their food. Students will need to have a knowledge base of the present perfect tense (i.e., After you have added the sugar ), past tense, and commands. They students will need to know how the food tastes, and knowledge of adjectives that go along with taste. The students will have to have knowledge of how to use a microphone, how to use Microsoft Word (including how to make accents, tildes, etc. in Spanish type) to write and paste into VoiceThread in case they are using words that contain these things, the program VoiceThread, and knowledge of researching using the Internet to find information on the recipe and food.
The students will need access to computers as well as to the Internet at school, and possibly at home or at a library. They will also need access to a kitchen to make the food, as well as money to buy the food or pre-bought food to make the food.
The students will spend 5.5 hours total on this project.
The following is a break down of the amount of time required for the project:
2 hours in class: 1/2 hour for researching, 1.5 hours for VoiceThread.
2.5 hours out of class: 2 hours for shopping/making food, 30 minutes preparing for presentation.
Click here for the student assignment sheet.
Click here for the rubric for this assessment.
Below is an example of a Final Project: