Pizza, sushi, ceviche and CI – Weird combinations that work

I guess I shouldn’t be shocked that pizza and ranch is a thing. But when one of my students drew it next to her name for her first card talk, it got my wheels turning.

We OBVIOUSLY had to start with the verb gustar if we were going to talk about pizza and ranch. I knew we would need some comprehensible input to reinforce its usage, so I pored through my semester selection of videos on SenorWooly.com and JACKPOT! “Qué asco”, I immediately flashed back to the maki hangovers my Peru students got after stuffing themselves with sushi when out with their Sister Cities amigos this summer. Sr. Wooly may have liked sushi viejo in his licuado, but the kids who were STILL obsessing over their international trip and their international friends had had sushi de helado!

So on to other scandalous Peruvian foods and ingredients. I raided my Instagram (OK, and a little Google search) for pictures of some questionable classics:

• ceviche
• lomo saltado
• aji de gallina
• causa

And thus quieres and various basic ingredients were introduced to their repertoire! Oh the facial expressions we were able to evoke discussing which ingredients and what they liked and did NOT like, what they did and did not want to try!

Also, one class had a little more time than the other (eclipses and whatnot, don’t you know), so I quick dug up a collection of extrañas combinaciones to introduce other possible foods/ammunition in a way my little novices could understand.

The next week we reviewed with an infograph I had pinned. I just had them work with a partner to ask questions–in English–on Google Classroom about it. I figured they wouldn’t be able to interpret much, but they could start making some educated guesses. Plus it gave me an excuse to work cuy in–and all of the introspection that goes along with their first reactions to it–even though it only has the one main (cuddly) ingredient.

And then? Then they were armed. One week into class, they were ready to show me what they could and couldn’t do–if they were ready to earn an A by making sure they had sentences with verbs or at least a B by combining words into phrases (though the first assessment was still a couple of weeks off). I posted my own gross Seesaw drawing as an example, reminded them of their proficiency babies, and set them loose.

Here are a few favorites:

AND because I have the Seesaw pro account, I was able to do a quick preliminary 1-4 rating of their novice (or intermediate if they were awesome…or, you know, heritage speakers) writing abilities! No grades, just an initial read to compare to down the road!

Now we’ve got a solid month of prepping for our amigos peruanos under our belts, the formal assessment has begun, and at least two speaking presentations so far have included pizza and ranch so far–and at least half of them are about foods that are new to them–or will be to their Peruvian amigos in the fall.

I think we’ve got a lot of great ingredients and are cooking up something that really works!