Olive Oil.mp4

Direct Instruction

The learning intention for this lesson was for the students to use technical vocabulary and to follow the structure of an explanation.

This session was attached to an inquiry lesson. We had been discussing the fact that different types of food grow in different regions due to a number of factors including climate. After giving the students some information about the food, we went away and tasted different dishes before discussing our thoughts as a class.

The following day, the class were writing a description of the food and an information report about a European country of their choice. However, I noticed that these students would benefit from a different focus and saw an opportunity to address this.

Extended plan here

Reflection

Tasting both olives and olive oil definitely helped to get more student buy in. The topic wasn't as engaging as I would usually select for the learners, but I wanted to find something that required technical vocabulary and that would ensure that the students maintained an academic tone (at times their explanations would read like recounts) . There was a lot of scaffolding around understanding the process and some of the vocabulary so that I knew the students had the knowledge required to write their explanations. I then left them alone to write before offering some feedback. I was very pleased with the writing that was created, but it was quite difficult to show all of the components of this lesson.

Things to note

This was quite a tricky lesson to film, perhaps because I had intended to film the discussion around food and inquiry, but I suddenly saw an opportunity to support the learners with a particular focus in writing and ran with it instead.