Undeniably, one of my all-time favourite games is Cafe World and in fact, when I started playing this game, I was already thinking “this is so useful for a language classroom!” Cafe world is an online virtual cooking game available on Facebook. Players are required to manage a virtual cafe by cooking and serving food to the citizens.
Undoubtedly, this game has unlimited potential for language learning. It is a great language resource too. It can enhance pupils’ mastery in imperatives and I think it helps pupils to enrich their vocabulary too. So presenting to you, a lesson with
Target learners: Year 4-5
Focused skill: Writing
Language Focus: Imperative verbs- chop, slice, sift, shred and etc.
Objective: Pupils will be able to create a list of instructions using the imperatives learnt.
1)Teacher explains how to play the game and the task that pupils are required to do.
2) Individually, pupils start setting up their restaurant, select and start cooking the dishes.
3) While doing so, they will need to write down the recipe and instructions of preparing the dish, while paying attention on the imperative verbs used.
4) Pupils then work in groups of 5 (depending on the number of enrollments), whereby they need to compile the recipes into a scrap book. They can include pictures of the dishes and the ingredients needed. Pupils can present their scrapbook according to their creativity and preferences.
5) I also found a task sheet which might be useful for follow-up activities:
www.primaryresources.co.uk/english/docs/imperative_verbs_LR.doc
So this is basically what the lesson is about. I deemed that such game is a good channel to promote learning as it can indirectly enhance pupils’ language proficiency and I think pupils will certainly love this game too. It trains their decision making skills as they have to decide the dishes that they want to serve in their ideal restaurant while taking into consideration the preparation time (this can be used for cross-curriculum subject-which is Maths). Besides, I think teachers can better assess and monitor pupils’ progress through scrapbooks as well, while giving tangible comments on how they can improve their work. Pupils are able to record what they have learnt too. Therefore, I definitely encourage teachers to employ games in teaching, but they must utilize it intelligibly together with other learning resources in order to inject learning through playing. Of course close supervision from the teachers is needed constantly when pupils engage in the game.
That’s all from me this week. I hope I can implement this lesson one day if the facilities in the school are supportive enough. Thanks for reading and if you have better idea regarding this lesson, please feel free to share! Have a nice day!
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