Students in Lake George High School’s 11th-grade Spanish class are engaged in a cultural unit centered on food, specifically, tapas, or Spanish appetizers. The project blends language, culture, and hands-on learning as students explore the flavors and traditions of Spanish cuisine.
As part of their cultural exploration assignment, students are learning about authentic dishes, designing menus, and preparing appetizers to share with classmates. The classroom transforms into a lively market, with each student presenting their dish as if they were a vendor at a traditional Spanish mercado. To deepen their language skills, they create slideshows describing their recipes, record short videos in Spanish, and share their opinions on the food. Afterward, the class graphs everyone’s feedback to see which dishes were the most and the least popular.
“Immersive learning gives students the chance to truly live the language,” said Jennifer Cornell, Jr.-Sr. High School Spanish teacher. “When they cook, speak, taste, and create, Spanish becomes more than words on a page, it becomes an experience they can connect with and remember.”
The learning doesn’t stop in the classroom. Students took a field trip to Boca Bistro in Saratoga Springs, where they enjoyed authentic tapas and practiced speaking Spanish in a real-world setting. They’ll also visit the home and careers classroom to follow Spanish-language recipes and work in teams to cook together, applying vocabulary, grammar, and command forms they’ve learned in class.
Through this immersive experience, Lake George juniors are discovering that learning a language goes far beyond textbooks, it’s about tasting, speaking, creating, and connecting with the culture behind every word.