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Let’s start with a brief warm-up that can spark your students’ interest and encourage active participation. Ready?

Begin your lesson with some interesting questions: Fish and chips, mince pies, shepherd's pies, bangers and mash… what other traditional British dishes do your students like? What food do they usually associate with the U.K.? Are there any famous British food festivals they know about?

And what about some fun, food-related idioms? Do your English learners believe that learning English is a piece of cake? Do they go bananas when dealing with homework? Do they know what it means to be as cool as a cucumber? What about the way the cookie crumbles? Can they think of any other interesting food idioms? Are there any equivalent phrases in their mother tongue?

OK, you are now ready to dive straight into more challenging activities!

Making Food Safe

Do your students know that almost 1 in 10 people get ill due to eating contaminated food each year? Have they ever heard of World Food Safety Day, celebrated annually on 7 June? Use the Food Safety Poster and the Food Safety: Myths & Facts Infographic, published by the World Health Organisation some years ago, to initiate a discussion about nutrition, food-borne risks and food safety. 

Young Learners

How can we avoid food-borne diseases such as salmonella? Are there any ways to decrease the chances of food poisoning and dangerous cross-contamination? What should we check when purchasing meat, seafood and fresh vegetables? Why should we use separate cutting boards when cooking? What do you know about the 5 keys to safer food? 

Older Learners

How can we ensure the food on our plate is safe? Why new threats to food safety are constantly emerging? Do the globalisation of food trade and climate change have an impact on the safety of the food we consume?

💡 You can divide your students into pairs or groups to help them brainstorm, work through different ideas and prepare their answers to your questions. 

Food Advertising & Packaging

Are your English learners aware of the smart ways in which advertisements and packaging influence our food choices? What do they think the most memorable food commercials of all time have in common?

Divide your students in small groups and ask them to find online examples of advertisements of food-related products they like. They could focus on the world’s most famous brands or companies and find examples of advertising the same product in English and in their mother tongue. 

Your learners have to present the ads they’ve chosen and discuss the ways in which persuasive language is used. What do the ads promise or claim? How are slogans and catchy phrases used? How do the ads make the other students feel? 

💡 You can also take a look at the free teaching resources that the Museum of Brands in London offers! Here, you can find a fun virtual scavenger hunt with lots of creative and engrossing activities (like this exciting Chocolate Inventing activity) and explore some of the most influential packaging inventions.

Next Food Heroes

World Food Day on 16 October offers a great opportunity to encourage your students to become food heroes, take fun quizzes and try out hands-on, creative learning activities that build a bridge between what is taught in your ELT classroom and what happens in life.

From great activity books and worksheets to interesting, free resources from well-known museums and art galleries, here you can find some smart ideas to help your students to sharpen their English skills in the best and most effective way: World Food Day Activities.