I created this task to help year 10 learn food and drink items.
Students have time to read the statements on their own and then to categorise them however they wish. As there is no right or wrong answers, all students are able to complete the task at their own level.
Students were allowed dictionaries to help understand the statements, but I deliberately included a range of cognates to build confidence.
Once students have chosen a category (some examples were fruit, drinks, positive opinions, future tense and vegetables), they write the number of any statement which would be included. The statements can be used more than once, as long as students are able to justify how it fits into their chosen categories.
I gave students ten minutes individually and then they worked in pairs to share ideas and expand their answers. More able students justified their choices in Spanish also.
This was the first time students had tried a task like this in Spanish and they responded very positively and came up with categories I had not even considered whilst writing the statements. Food and drink is such a vast topic, but the task engaged students well. I followed this task by giving groups a set of food and drink cards to discuss and I definitely think the modelled sentences in the inductive task helped them to produced more sophisticated responses. The full lesson is available to download below.
Categorisation task
Lesson power point and speaking cards
Speaking support sheet (always on desks and a regular feature of lessons)
Jenga sheet (students played jenga at the end of the lesson just to reinforce some of the core vocabulary. First round, they just had to translate the items. Second round they had to use it in a sentence.)