Reading comprehension and cooking are important life skills for students to learn in the classroom. From reading recipes to understanding nutrition labels, these abilities can help children build self-sufficiency and confidence as they grow into young adults. Integrating reading comprehension and cooking activities into the life skills classroom can be an effective way to engage students while teaching them essential skills. Whether it’s through hands-on cooking projects or written exercises, there are a variety of tools educators can use to foster learning.
If you have not cooked in your self-contained special education classroom, you are seriously missing out! It can be hard to manage with allergies, cost of ingredients, and lack of cooking equipment. However, there is a toooonnn of skills that can be worked on with cooking, including functional literacy skills. Read more if you want to know exactly how I work of reading comprehension when I do cooking lessons.
Reading comprehension is definitely something to work on during cooking. There is a lot that goes in to planning and creating a meal.
Food shopping
Using a shopping list is a crucial skill if you want to have a successful shopping trip. Last year, one activity that I always included at the beginning of my cooking lessons was a worksheet that incorporates my students reading the recipe and making a list off of it. They would cut and paste the items of the recipe as if they were shopping. If you actually have the chance to go buy items at the store, you could always use this same type of activity to prepare your students to buy what they will need.
I try to give my students extra practice using my grocery shopping worksheets. The worksheets come in three levels, including an errorless version. I love using these because it gives even the highest support students a chance to work on basic life skills.
Reading a recipe
I also love my recipe reading comprehension worksheets for this reason. Recently, I updated both sets with additional picture recipes and multiple-choice answers. Now even students that require more support can practice reading a recipe. I also have turned this activity to in to Boom cards. I love using Boom cards in my life skills class as a whole group activity or an independent work activity when a student finished early. The nice thing about Boom cards is that they are self-checking.
Check out my Grocery Food Shopping Reading Comprehension Worksheets
Check out my Recipe Reading Comprehension Worksheets…Set 1 and Set 2!
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