Sample Lesson Plan

My lesson plan, Order Up! is designed to teach students how to order themselves food at a restaurant. Because food ordering is primarily an oral activity in much of the English-speaking world, this activity is designed around mostly speaking exercises. For the warm-up, students are encouraged to name some favorite foods and drinks. Then, they are shown some common American foods to encourage them to think about commonplace food items they might order. Then, students are taught how to use conditional politeness and how to distinguish between count and noncount food items and how to use partitive expressions for foods that are either noncount or countable foods that are too large to make a realistic meal. This teaches them the appropriate grammar for ordering different types of food and drink. Students practice these new expressions with earlier pictures of commonplace food items. To expose them to American cuisine and to expand their vocabulary, students are shown an authentic menu from Fuddruckers, a famous burger restaurant. Students then exercise their speaking skills by playing roles of server and customer in pairs and trios. The teacher listens to some conversations and makes corrections as needed. After enough time to practice, some groups volunteer to share their dialogues in front of the class. This sets the example for other students on how the dialogue should go, and the teacher makes corrections as needed. Finally, the teacher revisits some of the students’ favorite foods from the warm-up and asks them how they would order them in English. For extra credit homework, students are encouraged to visit a real restaurant and order themselves food in English.