Although this is a seasonal dish, I had never made cranberry sauce in my life before. And, neither had my students. For most of them, they had not seen or tasted a cranberry before. We made this sauce from a recipe from the LINC 4 Activities: http://www.moresettlement.org/LINC1-4/LINC4/LINC_4_Classroom_Activities.pdf page 477 Cranberries, A North American Superfruit.
To sample the sauce, I brought in some halal cheese (no rennet or pepsin) and some crackers.
As we went through all the steps in the recipe, we described everything using the five senses. This included sampling a raw cranberry and a teaspoon full of pure maple syrup. Yum, yum! This builds concrete experience with the foods that many Canadians take for granted. It was also quite lovely to have this time out of the regular classroom and just to chat while each step was being completed. I will certainly try to do some more recipes in my class in the future.
Outcomes: reads and understands short instructions, read and understand formatted texts, measure ingredients accurately, give simple descriptions of simple objects
