My friend and I took language classes with an adult twist… Los Monitos beer and wine tastings in the language! Basically there is a country of the day, we learn about 4 drinks from there and talk about them in the language. After the class, we talked about how to adapt these ideas to our class and why this is so fun (beyond the obvious reasons).

We are DOING something. The instructor asks us questions (Is it sweet? Or dry?) and we have the card above to fill out, which became my security blanket when we were asked to speak. We also rated them at the end based on OUR opinions. I’m thinking that I can do the same for class, just adapt it to the lesson.

The original:

Modified for class:

An instructor MODELS the vocabulary with the REAL thing. This is way cooler than a PowerPoint. I can touch something and get even more language by looking at the labels.

We have the NECESSARY vocabulary. The first time, I focused only on “I like” and now I’m able to describe the basics. Next time I’ll talk about what it smells like. This reminds me to keep my lists simple and try to use pictures when possible. They will look up words if they really need them. I did! I even made my own list as we went.

Everyone talks on their OWN LEVEL. Some people there are fluent. I like trying to talk to them the most because they ask me more questions. So for the classroom, I can pair students where one can lead and the other can follow.

The goal is SPECIFIC. Describe it! It feels so good to be able to do it at the end. 😀

Update: I’ve found that this activity works great whenever we try a new food, candy or experience. For Day of the Dead, we tried chicken mole, fried crickets, dead bread and Mexican hot chocolate at a station. The students completed these opinion cards for notes. Also we tried 3 types of turrón for Christmas, so they used the cards to compare the types. When they explained which one they liked best, they could really elaborate why and compare.