The Food Pyramid (Il faut manger pour vivre, et non pas vivre pour manger)

Introduction

This class is prepared for monolingual English students that follow classes in science in French. The general concept is Health and this WebQuest is about the Food Pyramid. It is designed to develop content and language skills. And also, to develop cultural understanding by researching, analyzing and presenting a project under the title of: Compare the French and the American diet. Healthy and unhealthy foods. Give 3 examples and relate them to the food pyramid.

The content objectives:

  • Name the food groups of the food pyramid
  • Categorize foods into the food groups where they belong

List benefits and facts about healthy/unhealthy foods

Language objectives:

  1. Grammar – expressions with falloir (il faut+inf)
  2. Vocabulary
  • Nouns la pyramide alimentaire (the meaning of ‘diet’)
  • Adjectives sain, malsain, équilibré, favori, indispensable,
  • Verbs manger, boire, representer, contenir, donner de, aider   
  • Expressions – devoir + inf, il faut + inf, elle/il fait partie de…, grâce à, je trouve, je considère, à mon avis, le régime alimentaire

Contextual objective:

  • Investigate and analyze the American and French diet   
Task

This is reading comprehension task based on a Cooperative Learning method called Shared Reading.

In pairs or a class, one student reads out one paragraph, the other listen and try to make a summery. By choice of the teacher, the next student summarizes out loud and the other can confirm if it is correct. Then the student that did the summery continues reading the next paragraph and so on until the end of the text.

Process

                                                              Facile de manger sain !

La pyramide alimentaire vous aide. Plus le palier est large, plus les quantités à consommer sont grandes. Tout en haut de la pyramide, les paliers sont petits, les aliments sont donc à consommer avec modération.

L’eau: Les boissons occupent le bas de la pyramide. Les nutritionnistes conseillent de boire 1 à 2 litres de boissons non sucrées (et non alcoolisées) par jour.

Les féculents : Il est nécessaire de manger 3 portions de céréales par jour, si possible.

Fruits & légumes : Il est bien de manger 5 portions par jour (3 portions de légumes et 2 de fruits). Il est mieux de varier les couleurs.

Viande, poisson, œufs: Se sont des protéines. 3 portions de produits laitiers et 1 portion de viande/poisson/volaille/œufs/tofu/fromage par jour.

Les matières grasses : Les graisses font bien sûr partie d'une alimentation équilibrée. Il est obligatoire de consumer de l’huile, des noix et du beurre/margarine/crème.

Les produits sucres : De temps à autre vous pouvez prendre, un biscuit apéritif, une friandise, un verre de vin ou un soda ! 

Texte adapté de : https://www.nestlefamily.ch/fr/manger-quilibr/astuces-nutrition/la-pyramide-alimentaire

 

  1. Give students the text and ask them to skim it and tell you which level of the pyramid is missing
  2. In groups of 4 students use the Shared Reading technic to read the text.
  3. Ask students to read carefully and answer the quiz on the board (the activity is created on https://b.socrative.com/teacher/#edit-quiz/34708956)
  4. Ask students to draw the Food Pyramid and enter each paragraph in the correct level and write out the missing one (les produits laitiers).
  5. Grammar exercise – to look at the expressions in bold and to think of a synonym (il faut que)
  6. Class work - Talk about the food pyramid and ask them why they think its triangular? Correlation between healthy and unhealthy foods.
  7. Introduce the topic for the Final project and start with talking about the American diet.
  8. HW: Students research about The French diet

 

Evaluation

At the end of the activity, the student should be able to:

  • analyses thoroughly and draws conclusions from information, main ideas and supporting details.
  • engages thoroughly with the spoken and visual text by analyzing ideas, opinions and attitudes and by making a response to the text based on personal experiences and opinions from a global perspective.
  • show thorough understanding of the content, context and concepts of the text as a whole.
  • Use the expression il faut +inf

 

Conclusion

This reading activity is part of a bigger Unit called Health. The topic is Food Pyramid. The overall goal is to teach grammar, vocabulary and cultural context in an accidental way by engaging students in real context and using the ICT.

Teacher Page

Some practical advice:

  • Use the scaffolding to convey the vocabulary and the grammar
  • The class should be challenging enough to motivate the students but at the same time, it should feel safe so they learn accidentally.
  • Present the grammar exercise in a natural way, by giving examples