Last year I wrote a blog about making crepes in French class as an opportunity for cultural enrichment. Although students really seem to enjoy making and (especially) eating them, it can be an even more interesting experience knowing the history and tradition behind them. Many years ago, I came across a thorough history of the crepe (who knew they dated back to 7000 BC??) and condensed it into manageable paragraphs. To make it more accessible to students, I added a “lexique” of the harder words along the side with a few graphics as a visual aid (please see attached text). In addition to a formal reading assessment of decoding and comprehension, you could also have students draw a historical timeline. In terms of making connections, we had many interesting discussions as a class about similar variations of crepes and what other dishes in their own cultures were also traditionally significant. As with other subjects, French becomes interesting when you can relate it to something larger and that is personally relevant. In that sense, you can get a lot of mileage out of a bit of sugar, flour, eggs and milk.
P.S. Ideally, the crepe activity should coincide with the Mardi Gras celebrations occurring in mid-February. I was swamped and although I had it written, I didn’t get to post it in time. However, crepes are good at any time of the year and especially in the lead up to vacations of any kind when students tend to be unfocused and not as interested as perhaps they should be in the superlative form of adjectives…
Les crêpes-vue historique texte
