Our group really enjoyed participating and analyzing the “Recipe for Murder” lesson plan. There were many aspects of it that we found to be very helpful in terms of utilizing it in an upper-intermediate, lower-advanced class of students. We felt that the exercises, particularly the workshop exercises that the students choose to work on at the end, cater to some different perceptions of learning styles. The kinesthetic learners have a role play activity, the visual learners have an art activity, and the mechanical learners have writing opportunities (also digital  mechanical learners have an opportunity for a blog post). We also noted that personal writing is also being incorporated, which can further help students establish connections with the activities and thus retaining more of the information. Giving the students these choices really acknowledges the different learning styles and shows flexibility as a teacher in order to get students to learn the way they learn best.
We noted the many connections to other subjects, the most obvious one being history. There is also science and health in terms of the reflection questions and looking at food in terms of what is and what isn’t good for you. There is also an opportunity to connect all this to ones own culture.
Our group discussed some possible workshop activities that could be added to this lesson. The first one was rewriting the ending. Seeing as the students had a chance to talk about what they thought would happen in the mid-reading part of the lesson, we thought it would be cool for them to put those thoughts into writing after finding out what actually happened. They could write this in the same format as the story or maybe a script.
Another activity would be to think of some irresistible and dangerously good dishes from the students’ home country, and if they are visual they can even sketch up or draw these dishes.
Our last idea, which could be a little bit complicated based on the home culture of the student and the amount of creativity present, would be to adapt the story to a modern situation. For example, instead of taking place in France 50 years ago, it takes place in modern day NYC in an interrogation room with just a chair and a table with an American detective. It might bring out some interesting points of view!
There were some things that our group would have done differently. In terms of the fill in the blank section in the very beginning, we had two ideas of how to introduce students to this. Instead of just giving it to them without context, we would either have them read up on it as homework before class or we would show them a short video that gives a summary of some of the big dates of WWII and let them piece the rest together.
For the vocabulary game, we noted that some of the words may be a little bit tricky to know right off the bat so we thought of having the cards face up first and match them up together so that the students have a chance to visualize them. We also thought of maybe doing the game after the reading so the students have seen the words being used, which might help them remember the words better.
This lesson was very interactive, and we definitely had fun acting out the reading and getting into heated discussion during the reflective portion. There is definitely a lot of good material to work with here!
By Sara (Ikea), Dylan (Pickle), Amy (Boba), and Ben (Cleopatra)