Use this grocery store shopping lesson plan in your Spanish class! Shopping is quite entertaining and comprises multiple vocabulary elements. Here, you’ll find different activities you can use to teach students about what’s at the store in another language!
Vamos a Comprar
Give your lesson a name such as Vamos A Comprar: Let’s Go Shopping. Plan the lesson plan in two parts. The first would be setting up a supermarket atmosphere in the classroom. The second will be to take the kids on a field trip to a real Spanish supermarket, which you can find in almost any city.
Classroom Supermarket
Prepare the classroom as much as possible in the order of how a real supermarket is set up. Ask students to bring to class real or plastic fruits and vegetables. The teacher should also provide some. Substitute items needed by using cardboard cutouts and clippings from magazine ads, flyers and newspapers. To make the exercise fun and encourage your students to associate colors with food, distribute slips of paper in different colors. Name and write on the board various fruits and vegetables in Spanish and ask students to list them by color in accordance with the color of the paper they have been given. For example, students with yellow slips of paper may write:
- la naranja – orange; las naranjas – oranges
- la banana – banana; las bananas – bananas
Those with a green slip of paper may write:
- el plátano verde – green banana; los plátanos verdes – green bananas
la lechuga – lettuce
Those with red slips of paper may write:
- La manzana – apple; las manzanas – apples
- El tomate – the tomato; los tomates – the tomatoes
Shopping
Now you are ready for your students to shop. Armed with their slips of paper, they enter the makeshift classroom supermarket in groups, and collect the food items in accordance with the color of the slips of paper they have in hand.
In the deli section they can practice a simple dialogue:
El Dependiente: ¿Puedo ayudarle?
Shop Assistant: May I help you?
El Cliente: Un kilo de queso por favor.
Customer: A kilo of cheese please.
El Dependiente: Aquí tiene. ¿Algo más?
Shop assistant: Here you are. Anything else?
El Cliente: 200 gms (doscientos gramos) de jamón por favor.
Customer: 200 grams of ham please.
El Dependiente: Aquí tiene. ¿ Algo más?
Shop Assistant: Here you are. Anything else?
El Cliente: No señor. Nada más. Es todo. Gracias.
Customer: No, sir. Nothing else. That’s all. Thanks.
El Dependiente: De nada.
Shop Assistant: You are welcome.
In a Real Supermarket
Here students can practice what they have learned in the classroom in a real-life setting. Here they can buy:
- el pescado – fish
- el carne – meat
- el helado – ice cream
By using these shopping in Spanish lesson plans, students will see the actual labels in Spanish on the food items. Plan a picnic so that they will enjoy savoring some of their purchases. If the class is too large for the field trip, divide the class into two groups and take them on different days.
References
- Image: Mixed Fruits by Pixomar under freedigitalphotos.net Terms of Use
- Shopping at a Spanish Market; Fruit and Vegetable Vocabulary; http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/shopping-at-a-spanish-market-fruit-and-vegetable-v.seriesId-76365.html
- Shopping for Food; http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/tutors/factfiles/food.pdf
- Image: Fresh Vegetables in Market by Kittikun Atsawintarangkul under freedigitalphotos.net Terms of Use
