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Thursday, January 10, 2013

Guineo o Plátano? Comparing Plantains and Bananas

My students have been working on a cultural unit comparing life in Puerto Rico to life in America. I did a similar unit last year with Mexico. (click here and here to read those) Many of the lesson in that unit can be adapted for any Spanish speaking country.

I always try to incorporate a lesson on food in a way that I can give students an opportunity to taste food from the Spanish speaking country. That can be more difficult than expected, given that I teach over 250 students over the course of a given week. This year I thought the perfect food to discuss would be plátano/plantains, because they are a perfect food to compare to something most kids have tasted before: bananas. I started by reading the book I Want My Banana, by Mary Risk as a way to introduce the vocabulary.


I then drew a Venn diagram on the board. I showed my students how to use a Venn diagram by having a student come up next to me and the class was able to compare and contrast us (teacher vs. student.) After students got the hang of using a Venn diagram. I gave them the following worksheet to take back to their desks. 

I also gave each pair a banana and plátano, as well as tasting samples of each (plantain chips and banana slices.) Students worked in pairs comparing and contrasting plátanos and bananas based on the way they looked, felt, and tasted. While students were working I played the music from this video in the background, to remind them of the unit them: Puerto Rico.


After completing their worksheets students came back to the carpet discuss their work. I then gave students more basic information about plátanos, including how they are grown, and that they are cooked/used as vegetables not fruits. Lastly, I showed this video (starting at 29 seconds) which does a great job discussing the different kinds of plátanos that exist and how they are prepared. 


It was a really fun lesson! Let me know how it goes for you.