MAPA – LET – LÍNGUA INGLESA II – 53_2025

by Bernadette Musetti, Iliana Chen | 20 Nov 2024

Language and food connect us universally, while also being place and culture specific, which makes food an ideal topic for both language and ecoliteracy study. Food is important culturally and holds special meaning for families, religions, nations, and celebrations of all kinds.

Classroom Activities to Connect Food and Earth Study

Here are a few fun ways to begin discussing food with your multilingual learners of English:

Talk about special food: ask each student to name and describe a special dish from their culture and where the main ingredient is grown. Is it grown locally? Is it possibly imported from another region or country? (Ideally the actual dishes could be shared as part of a class or school celebration).

LÍNGUA INGLESA

Create a recipe book: have your class compile a recipe book of all of the students’ favorite dishes, with each student receiving a copy of the booklet. This gets students thinking about the importance of food to them and their traditions. From there, students can begin to understand some of the issues surrounding food, which include challenges regarding growing, transporting, accessing, and consuming food.

Engage in word study: do word study with your students by dissecting and analyzing relevant words. In this case, with the plan to extend food discussion into ecoliteracy exploration, word study might include words like compost, vermicompost, metacrisis, and monoculture. You can complete the word study in advance of the lesson(s) in order to frontload the knowledge.

LÍNGUA INGLESA

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Activate prior knowledge: you can introduce some food-related ecoliteracy topics using a set of true/false statements, where students work in pairs to predict the answers. Through further class study and discussion, they’ll ultimately understand the “correct” responses.

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Adaptado de: https://www.tesol.org/blog/posts/connecting-food-earth-culture-and-language-in-the-classroom/. Acesso em 2 de jan. 2025.