Unit 1 — Likes and Dislikes and Food
Description
Students learn vocabulary related to food and common foods from Spanish-speaking countries. The unit explores how food is an integral part of culture and how different countries have varying mealtime etiquette and traditions. Students engage with the three modes of communication through discussing food preferences, reading authentic menus, and presenting about cultural food traditions. The unit includes Integrated Performance Assessments where students read menus, participate in restaurant skits, and create video projects using all three communicative modes.
Essential Questions
- How is food different throughout the world?
- Why is it important to discuss food in Spanish-speaking countries?
Learning Objectives
- Identify and name common foods in Spanish using memorized and practiced words and phrases
- Express likes and dislikes about foods using target language structures
- Describe mealtime traditions and rituals in Spanish-speaking countries
- Compare and contrast food customs between Spanish-speaking cultures and the United States
- Understand different levels of language formality within family settings and at mealtimes
- Recognize cultural practices and etiquette related to eating in target cultures
Suggested Texts
- Everyone Cooks Rice — picture book
Supplemental Resources
- Index cards for food vocabulary for vocabulary practice
- Chart paper for displaying food words and cultural comparisons
- Printed images or photographs of Spanish-speaking foods and meals for visual supports
Interpersonal Mode
Interpretive Mode
Presentational Mode
Students engage in writing and reading activities across all units, including writing descriptions, creating narratives, reading authentic passages, and expressing ideas through written communication in Spanish and English.
Students explore Spanish-speaking countries, their cultures, customs, families, schools, and lifestyles. Learning includes geographic awareness, cultural practices, and understanding diverse perspectives from target language communities.
Students create posters, presentations, skits, songs, and visual projects. They engage in dramatization, creative expression, and perform cultural activities that integrate music and performance.
Students examine climate change, environmental awareness, and recycling practices in Spanish-speaking communities. Topics include weather, animals, natural resources, and geography-related concepts.
Students use mathematics in practical contexts including time telling, ordinal numbers, counting, measuring, creating floor plans with scale, and interpreting quantitative data.
Students utilize digital tools and applications including Flipgrid, Edpuzzle, Duolingo, Quizlet, Google Tools, YouTube, and other web-based platforms for language learning, research, and project creation.
Formative Assessments
- Classroom dialogues in which students discuss food preferences and dislikes
- Reading comprehension activities based on authentic menus
- Listening activities identifying food vocabulary from spoken passages
- Partner conversations about favorite foods and meal traditions
- Written descriptions of preferred meals and family food customs
Summative Assessment
Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) requiring students to write and perform a restaurant skit, read and answer questions about an authentic menu, and create a video project using all three modes of communication related to food
Benchmark Assessment
— not configured —
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate understanding through oral responses with vocabulary word cards or visual menus instead of written responses. Sentence frames and word banks may be provided to support production of target language structures for likes, dislikes, and food descriptions.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
Students may benefit from visual supports such as picture-word cards pairing food vocabulary with images to reinforce memorization of Spanish terms and phrases. For oral performance tasks like the restaurant skit, providing a sentence frame template or a partially completed script can reduce the cognitive load of output while keeping the communicative goal intact. Extended time and the option to pre-record spoken responses rather than perform live may support students who need additional processing time or have difficulty with on-demand oral production. Written tasks such as meal descriptions can be scaffolded with graphic organizers or fill-in-the-blank formats that allow students to demonstrate content knowledge without being hindered by the volume of writing required.
Section 504
Students should be given extended time for both written tasks and oral performance components, including the restaurant skit and video project. Preferential seating during listening activities can help students focus on identifying food vocabulary from spoken passages, and a reduced-distraction environment should be available during reading comprehension work with authentic menus. Providing a printed copy of any vocabulary or direction sets displayed on the board ensures students can reference key language at their own pace throughout the unit.
ELL / MLL
Visual supports such as illustrated food vocabulary charts and labeled images of dishes from Spanish-speaking countries will help students connect new Spanish terms to concepts they may already know in their home language. Teachers should use simplified, chunked directions when explaining tasks like the menu reading activity or the video project, and encourage students to first process ideas in their home language before producing output in Spanish. Connecting unit content to foods and mealtime traditions from students' own cultural backgrounds can serve as a meaningful bridge into the target culture comparisons the unit requires.
At Risk (RTI)
Building from what students already know — familiar foods, family mealtimes, and personal preferences — provides accessible entry points into the unit's vocabulary and cultural content. Reducing the number of new vocabulary items introduced at one time and offering repeated exposure through listening, viewing, and conversation before expecting written or performed output can help students build confidence and accuracy. Structured templates for the restaurant skit or video project allow students to engage meaningfully with the communicative modes without being overwhelmed by open-ended production demands.
Gifted & Talented
Students can be encouraged to explore the regional and socioeconomic dimensions of food culture across multiple Spanish-speaking countries, moving beyond surface-level comparisons to analyze how history, geography, and identity shape culinary traditions. For the video project or restaurant skit, students might incorporate more sophisticated language registers, including formal versus informal address forms appropriate to different dining contexts, or experiment with dialect variation in how certain foods are named across regions. Independent research into the cultural significance of a specific dish or mealtime ritual — grounded in authentic sources — can extend the unit's cultural content into genuine inquiry.