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I had forgotten how it
feels to be working with kids for five hours straight. Add to it 40 degree
weather and I come home exhausted everyday. The summer camp at the
International Institute of Madrid is
all about learning English and practicing it. We have four themes this
summer. This week it is the Five Senses. I like this theme because
there is so much vocabulary to work with and you can do so many activities.
Today we did a Taste Test so that they could learn the words salty,
spicy, sour, bitter and sweet. During our vocabulary lesson we went
over these words and associated them to different foods and they wrote them
in their notebooks. I put salt, black pepper, coffee grounds, a lemon
wedge and sugar in small trays. I had students write in their notebooks
the title Taste Test.
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Then I had each table (four students to a table) come up to my desk to do the test. They took their finger and tasted the salt. I had them tell me what it tasted like and then sent them to write the word salty in their notebooks. We did this with each item and each table.
Next I had them come to the carpet and help me write sentences on the board, so that they can extend their learning to phrases instead of loose vocabulary words with no connections. We wrote the following:
The salt tasted salty.
The pepper was spicy.
The coffee tasted bitter.
The lemon was very sour.
The sugar was sweet.
The look on their faces when they tasted salt and lemon was precious. They amazingly liked the bitter taste of coffee and of course they loved the sugar which I left until last so they were left with a sweet taste in their mouth and a positive experience. It was no problem getting them to help me write the sentences they had learned the vocabulary words quite well.
Tomorrow we will review with a taste sort so that they can use these words again and continue to associate them to different food items. The students are six and seven, so I don't want to overload them with too much vocabulary, but I want them to make these few words part of their vocabulary.