Unit 3 More Than a Meal-Section 1 Reading for Meaning 教案-2025-2026学年高中英语冀教版选择性必修第一册

It focuses on developing students’ language ability to understand and express food-related cultural connotations, cultural awareness to respect diverse dietary cultures, thinking quality to analyze the connection between food and society, and learning ability to master effective reading strategies.

Key points: Grasp the main idea and details of the text, master core vocabularies and sentence patterns about food culture.

Difficult points: Understand the deep meaning of “more than a meal” and analyze the cultural and social significance behind food.

Step 1: Lead-in (Lead-in and Warm-up)

The teacher starts the class with a multimedia presentation, showing pictures of different kinds of food from various countries and regions, such as Chinese dumplings, Italian pizza, Japanese sushi, and Indian curry. Then the teacher asks students two questions in English: “What is your favorite food? Do you think food is just for satisfying hunger?” After asking the questions, the teacher invites 3-4 students to share their answers with the whole class. During the sharing process, the teacher gives positive feedback and guidance, such as “Your answer is very interesting. Actually, food means more than that in many cases.”

After the student sharing, the teacher naturally leads to the topic of the lesson: “Today we will learn a passage titled More Than a Meal. Through this passage, we will explore what food means beyond satisfying our hunger and understand the cultural and social significance behind different foods.”

Design Intention: The lead-in link uses familiar food pictures to arouse students’ interest in learning, shorten the distance between students and the teaching content, and lay a foundation for the follow-up reading and exploration. By asking questions, students are guided to think deeply about the meaning of food, not just stay on the surface of “eating”, which helps to cultivate their thinking quality and naturally lead to the theme of the text.

Step 2: Pre-reading (Vocabulary Preview and Text Prediction)

Vocabulary Preview

The teacher presents the core vocabularies and phrases in the text on the screen, including “symbolize”, “gather”, “celebration”, “tradition”, “cultural heritage”, “strengthen”, “connection”, “significance” and so on. For each vocabulary and phrase, the teacher explains its pronunciation, part of speech and basic meaning, and gives simple example sentences combined with food culture, such as “Dumplings symbolize reunion in Chinese culture.” “Family members gather together to have meals on festivals.”

After the explanation, the teacher organizes a quick memory activity: the teacher reads the Chinese meaning of the vocabulary, and students respond with the corresponding English words quickly; then the teacher reads the English words, and students read the example sentences aloud. This activity helps students consolidate the newly learned vocabularies in a short time.

Text Prediction

The teacher shows the title of the text “More Than a Meal” and the pictures in the text to the students, and asks them to predict the main content of the text: “According to the title and the pictures, what do you think the passage will talk about? What aspects of ‘more than a meal’ will it introduce?” Students are allowed to discuss in groups of 4 for a short time, and then each group sends a representative to share their predictions. The teacher writes down the key points of the students’

predictions on the blackboard, such as “food and culture”, “food and family”, “food and tradition” and so on.

Design Intention: Vocabulary preview helps students eliminate the language barriers in reading, so that they can focus more on understanding the content and theme of the text, which is the basis for improving reading efficiency. Text prediction is an important reading strategy. By guiding students to predict the content of the text according to the title and pictures, we can cultivate their ability to obtain information from clues, stimulate their desire to read, and make their reading more targeted.

Step 3: While-reading (In-depth Reading and Information Extraction)

Skimming (Fast Reading for Main Idea)

The teacher asks students to read the text quickly, without paying too much attention to the new words and difficult sentences that they don’t understand, and try to grasp the main idea of the text. After reading, the teacher asks students to answer the question: “What is the main idea of this passage?” Then the teacher invites several students to answer, and summarizes and corrects their answers. The main idea of the text is: Food is not only a necessity to satisfy hunger, but also carries rich cultural connotations, strengthens family connections and inherits cultural traditions.

At the same time, the teacher guides students to divide the text into several parts according to the main content, and clarify the logical structure of the text: the first part (Paragraph 1) raises the topic that food is more than a meal; the middle part (Paragraphs 2-4) introduces the significance of food in cultural inheritance, family gatherings and social communication respectively; the last part (Paragraph 5) summarizes the importance of food and calls on people to cherish the cultural meaning behind food.

Scanning (Detailed Reading for Key Information)

After skimming, the teacher asks students to read the text carefully again, and complete the following tasks with the help of the key information in the text:

Task 1: Fill in the blanks according to the text. The blanks involve the key information about the role of food in different aspects, such as “Food plays an important role in ______ (cultural inheritance).” “Family meals can ______ (strengthen family connections).”

Task 2: Answer the detailed questions.  What does food symbolize in different cultures?  How do family meals strengthen family connections?  What is the significance of food in social communication?

During the students’ reading and completing the tasks, the teacher walks around the classroom, observes the students’ situation, and provides timely help for the students who have difficulties. After the students finish the tasks, the teacher checks the answers with the whole class, explains the difficult points in the tasks, and emphasizes the key information and core sentences in the text.

Close Reading (Analyzing Difficult Sentences and Deep Meaning)

The teacher selects several difficult sentences in the text that are closely related to the theme, and guides students to analyze them, helping students understand the deep meaning of the sentences and the author’s expression intention.

Example 1: “Food is more than just fuel for our bodies; it is a symbol of our culture, our family and our connection to the people around us.” The teacher guides students to analyze the structure of the sentence (using the structure “more than...; it is...”), and explains the meaning of the sentence: Food is not only a substance to maintain our physical life, but also a symbol of culture, family and interpersonal relationships. Through this sentence, the author emphasizes the multiple meanings of food beyond satisfying hunger.

Example 2: “Every time we gather around the table with our family, we are not just eating; we are sharing our lives, our joys and our sorrows.” The teacher asks students to think about the meaning of this sentence: Family meals are not just a process of eating, but an opportunity for family members to communicate and share, which can strengthen the emotional connection between family members. Then the teacher invites students to combine their own life experience to talk about