I love cooking. And I love cooking with kids even more! Don’t worry if you’ve never cooked with your class before. There are so many things you can cook and make into a real English language learning experience.Pizza is one of my favorite things to eat. It’s also a great thing to cook with your class. Nearly all kids like pizza and you can adapt it to deal with likes and dislikes and also food allergies and intolerances. If you’re making pizza in EFL ESL Kids class, you won’t need any fancy equipment and it will teach your class loads of useful vocabulary. It helps if you have a bit of space to use as a kitchen. If you have access to an oven, that’s even better. Just be careful with the timings as I explain below. So, are you ready for a very easy, step by step lesson plan? Today we’re cooking pizza!
What will you need to make pizza in your EFL ESL class with kids ?
Ingredients:
- 1 kg of plain flour
- About 500 ml warm water
- 1 teaspoon of dried yeast
- 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 bottle of tomato passata
- 3 balls of mozzarella
- Topping ingredients – whatever you and your class like
CHECK FOR ALLERGIES WITH PARENTS!!
Cooking Equipment:
- 1 large mixing bowl
- 2 smaller bowls and 2 spoons
- A plate and knife
- Rolling pins
- Baking trays or pizza stones
- An oven
Making pizza in EFL ESL Kids class in 9 easy steps
So we’re ready to start our class. These are the different steps you will need to follow for the kids to make pizza.
1. Introduce your cooking lesson
Before we start cooking, we need to introduce the theme of the lesson. Ask the children to guess what they’re going to cook today. You could do this by playing a Pictionary game and drawing the ingredients one by one until they guess. Or play a mystery box game with all the ingredients. Once they’ve guessed, you can sing a food song. I like Do you like Broccoli Ice cream? by Super Simple Songs. You can change the lyrics and invent all sorts of crazy toppings for your pizzas.
2. Introduce your ingredients
It’s time to get out your ingredients and start making the dough for the pizza. This quantity of dough will make about 8 small pizzas or 3-4 big ones. It’s the recipe I use at home every weekend to make pizza for my Italian family so I can guarantee it is good! If you think this is too complicated or don’t have time for the dough to rise, you could always use a pack of ready made pizza dough or make the dough in advance. If you do want to make it from scratch though, I think the kids would really enjoy it.
3. Make the pizza dough
Drill the actions you’ll be doing to make the pizza with the kids using lots of TPR. Depending on how old and responsible they are, let them do all the work or do it yourself with some help. Weigh out the flour and mix it with the salt and the olive oil. Then mix the yeast and sugar in about 250 ml of warm water. Leave the yeast 5-10 minutes until it starts looking a bit foamy and then mix it into the flour. Add the rest of the water and form a ball of dough. You might need to add more water if it’s too dry or more flour if it’s too sticky. Then turn out the ball of dough onto a clean surface.
4. Knead the dough and let it rise
Let everybody have a turn kneading the dough until it’s nice and bouncy and elastic. Then put it back in the bowl, cover with a towel and leave in a warm place for a couple of hours to rise. This may not be practical with your class timing. In this case, I would advise to split the lesson in two. Make the dough one week. Then either take it home and use it yourself or use it to make something with another class. For the next class, prepare the dough in advance and bring it ready to cook.
5. Roll out the pizza
First, preheat your oven to about 220 degrees Celsius. Split the kids into 8 small groups and give each group a ball of dough. Give them a baking tray and ask them to roll or squash the dough with their hands into a pretty thin pizza. Once everyone has done this, you can start to prepare the toppings.
6. Put toppings on the pizza
Let each group choose what they want to put on top of their pizza. Obviously they have to tell you in English what they want. They can decide it between the group by asking questions: “What do you want on the pizza?”, ” I want salami”. They can also tell each other if there is something they don’t like. “I don’t want tuna”. Get them to spread the tomato passata on the pizza, chop the mozzarella and then put all the toppings on the pizzas.
7. Cook the pizza
Before you put the pizza in the oven, ask each group to describe their pizza and what ingredients they used. Then put the baking trays in the oven and cook the pizza for about 15 – 20 minutes or until the mozzarella is melted and the dough feels cooked. Be careful, it will be very hot!
8. Eat the pizza!
When the pizza is cooked and cooled down slightly, it’s time to try it. Ask the kids to prepare the table. What do they need? Cut the pizza into pieces and let everyone try it. Is it good? Do they like it?
9. Draw your pizza recipe
If you’ve still got time when you have finished eating, write the ingredients on the board and ask the kids to write or draw the recipe and what they did to make the pizza. For very little kids, you could ask them to draw their pizza and what it had on top. Then they can take the recipe and any left over pizza home to show their families. Make sure they help you clear up before leaving.
I hope you enjoyed this recipe and lesson plan. Making pizza in EFL ESL Kids class is such a fun way to learn about food and cooking. It’s very satisfying for the kids to eat the pizza they helped make too. If you’ve enjoyed this cooking in class lesson plan, you can find more ideas here. Leave me a comment to tell me how it went and if your pizza was good! To stay up to date with new ideas and lesson plans, you can follow the GoogooEnglish Facebook page or sign up for email updates below.