One of our Saturday lessons was all about chocolate. The pupils found out about the stages of chocolate making and the different kinds of chocolate, and talked about which chocolate they like best and what can be conjured up from it. In this sweet way they learnt a new digraph – ‘cz’, as in the word ‘czekolada’ (chocolate).
The journey from bean to bar is a long one: cocoa beans are fermented, dried and roasted, and then ground into cocoa mass. The best-known kinds of chocolate are dark, milk and white.
The sweetest part of the lesson was making their own chocolate cones, which looked very appetising. The photos show the children working at bowls of chocolate and the finished cones wrapped in clear film.
The children consolidated the new digraph on worksheets, in a crossword, in games on the interactive whiteboard and by arranging cards with words and pictures. A digraph is two letters representing a single sound; Polish has seven of them: ‘ch’, ‘cz’, ‘dz’, ‘dź’, ‘dż’, ‘rz’ and ‘sz’. The digraph ‘cz’ is found in many everyday words, such as ‘czapka’ (hat), ‘czas’ (time) and ‘czwartek’ (Thursday). Pupils growing up in Great Britain may find it helpful to associate it with the English word ‘chocolate’, which begins with a similar sound, though it is spelt quite differently.
More photos from our chocolate Saturday can be seen in the gallery.
