Slide outline for Lesson 6.10. Twenty slides across two days: Day 1 slides 1 to 11, Day 2 slides 12 to 20. Slide 2 is read out loud and never skipped. [Sal: every dish photo should be a real dish, not a stylized one, and every photo needs the dish name and the region under it so students see both together.]
DAY 1
One Dish, Three Cultures
- Unit 6, Lesson 6.10, Day 1
- Topic 6.2 Food Preparation Methods and Science
- Today: why do so many separate cultures land on the same idea?
Teacher notes
Image: three dishes side by side, an empanada, a pierogi, and a samosa, each labeled with its name and region.
Our agreement on food talk
- Curious, not disgusted. "I have not tried that" is a sentence. "That is gross" is not
- Ask, do not assume. Ask the question instead of guessing the answer
- No ranking. No best, no worst, no "weird"
- Nobody has to be the expert on their own background. You may share, and you may say nothing
Teacher notes
Read all four out loud. Do not summarize and do not skip past. One "that is disgusting" in the first two minutes sets the tone for both days.
Do now
- Name a food you eat at home that you have never seen in a school cafeteria
- One line
- If you cannot think of one, name a food you have seen somebody else eat that you have never tried
Teacher notes
Collect four dishes on the board with no names attached. Never write a student's name next to a dish.
Three continents, three centuries, one idea
- Dough around filling, sealed, cooked
- Nobody copied anybody
- Why does this keep happening?
Teacher notes
Image: the same three dishes from slide 1, now with a world map behind them and a line from each to its region.
This is the hook.
Climate
- Heat, cold, rainfall, and growing season decide what can be grown
- And how food has to be preserved
- Rice needs standing water and heat
- Cold regions preserve with salt, smoke, and fermentation
Teacher notes
Image: a flooded rice paddy beside a barrel of salted fish.
Crops
- Whatever grows well nearby becomes the staple
- The staple shapes every meal
- Corn in Mesoamerica, wheat in Europe, rice in Asia, potatoes in the Andes, teff in Ethiopia, cassava in West Africa
Teacher notes
Image: six staple crops in six small photos, labeled.
Trade
- Ingredients moved along routes and rewrote whole cuisines
- Chilies went from the Americas to Asia and Africa after 1500
- Tomatoes went from the Americas to Italy
- Black pepper went from India to Europe
Teacher notes
Image: a world map with four labeled arrows.
This is the slide that breaks the idea of a pure traditional cuisine, and it is worth thirty extra seconds.
Migration
- People carry recipes and adapt them to what the new place sells
- Red beans and rice in Louisiana carries West African cooking into a Gulf pantry
- Pizza in New York is not pizza in Naples
Teacher notes
Image: two versions of the same dish side by side, home country and new country.
Religion
- Permitted and forbidden foods
- Fasting days and feast dishes
- Halal and kosher rules on meat, Lent and Ramadan fasting, vegetarian practice in Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist traditions
Teacher notes
Factual, brief, no commentary. This is one of the five factors and it gets the same thirty seconds as the other four.
The pattern, three ways
- All three: dough plus filling, sealed, cooked
- The dough differs in how it is made and rolled
- The filling is whatever is local and affordable
- The method differs: fried, boiled, fried or baked
- Which factor explains each difference?
Teacher notes
Model the comparison out loud so the format is demonstrated before students do it alone. Students fill the first row of the comparison page from your example.
Your research card
- Pick your form and your three cultures
- One dish per person
- Five boxes: region, ingredients, method, why here, one surprise
- Two sources, one from the library or a reference source
- "Because it is their tradition" does not answer box 4
- * *
DAY 2
Teacher notes
Push on box 4 while you circulate. It is the box students skip. Exit card: "The factor that explains my dish best is ___ because ___."
Present and Compare
- Unit 6, Lesson 6.10, Day 2
- Ninety seconds each
- Three versions of the same idea, back to back
Teacher notes
Image: three flatbreads side by side, a pita, a roti, and a tortilla, each labeled.
Do now
- Read your research card
- Write the one fact on it that will surprise the class
Teacher notes
Thirty seconds.
Our agreement, again
- Curious, not disgusted
- Ask, do not assume
- No ranking
- Nobody has to be the expert on their own background
Teacher notes
Up before the first presentation. One question per group from the class, and every question has to follow the agreement.
Your ninety seconds, in order
- My dish is ___ from ___
- The main ingredients are ___
- It is cooked by ___
- It exists there because ___
- The thing that surprised me is ___
Teacher notes
Visible timer. Run the presentations in rounds by form so the class hears three versions of the same form together.
Same, different, why
- What is the same across all three?
- What is different?
- Why? Name at least two of the five factors
Teacher notes
Write the "same" and "different" points on the board as they come out of the presentations. Push any answer that says "because that is their culture" back to a factor.
A better question
- Not: "do you actually eat that?"
- Better: "what does it taste like?"
- Not: "why is it like that?"
- Better: "what grows there?"
Teacher notes
If a question misses the agreement, rephrase it in front of the room, kindly and immediately, and move on.
The tasting, if we are doing it
- Store bought, packaged, labeled
- Every ingredient panel is taped beside its plate
- One piece each, own napkin, no double dipping
- A no-taste seat is always available and no reason is required
Teacher notes
If one student in the room cannot safely eat any of the three, the tasting does not run and Day 2 is presentations plus the written comparison, which is the default version. Say that decision out loud without naming anybody.
If we are not tasting
- The extension: pick a fourth everyday form that shows up in three cultures
- Name the form and the three versions
- One ingredient that makes each one local
- One sentence: why does this form show up everywhere?
Teacher notes
This replaces the tasting with no loss to any objective.
Closing round
- One sentence per group: the thing you will remember
- Then: one thing I would try, and one question I still have
Teacher notes
Keep the round to the agreement. Collect every comparison page at the door. If the tasting ran, keep the packages; the ingredient panels are a free Unit 1 label lesson.