Introduction
This is a popular topic in any primary course and has a lot of potential for cross-curricular work.
Aims
- To provide cross-curricula links with nutrition.
- To practise pair interaction with a short dialogue
- Some of these activities encourage support at home which will help the parents to become involved in the English their child is learning. In turn the children themselves should see that what they are learning can have a real impact on their lives outside of the classroom.
Material
- Paper and card for making own books
- Cut up copies of dialogue sentences
- Cooking clipart as vocabulary flashcards
- Access to computers for scavenger hunt
- Storybooks (if possible)
Role play
This can be a model for a short dialogue. Cut up into strips of paper and in pairs the children can reorganize the dialogue into the correct order.
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Greengrocer: Good morning |
| Greengrocer: Can I help you? |
| Customer: Good morning |
| Customer: Yes please. I would like two bananas, five oranges and three apples please. |
| Greengrocer: Anything else? |
| Customer: No thank you. |
| Greengrocer: Two pounds please. |
|
Greengrocer: Thank you, Good bye. |
|
Customer: Goodbye |
Storybooks
Here are some of my favourite storybooks that are related to food.
Eat Your Peas by Kes Gray and Nick Sharratt – Confronts the issue of fussy eaters. It transpires that Daisy’s Mum is as fussy as her daughter. She will offer absolutely anything (including one hundred chocolate factories and a couple of space rockets) so that Daisy will eat her peas. The story culminates when Daisy points out that her mum hasn’t eaten her brussel sprouts. You can use this book to lead the topic of what you do and don’t like to eat.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle – A classic story of the hungry caterpillar who every day eats a little bit more until one day he turns into a beautiful butterfly.
Max’s Breakfast by Rosemary Wells – Also looks at fussy eaters as Max’s sister Ruby tries to convince her brother to eat his egg. She ends up eating it herself.
Ketchup on your Cornflakes by Nick Sharratt – A split-page book which allows all sorts of food combinations such as ice-cream on your hat or custard on your chips. Children love making their own versions and you could enforce a fruit or vegetable rule whereby every combination must include a fruit or vegetable.
Make your own books
Here is a book which you can copy and print for free. The language is simple e.g. ‘I like Bananas’, and so accessible to younger primary learners.
http://www.dltk-kids.com/nutrition/fruit-book.htm
There are sequencing cards to accompany this book that you can copy and print so that the children can practise their listening skills and process what they have understood by putting the sequencing cards into the correct order.
http://www.dltk-kids.com/nutrition/fruit-sequencing.htm
Fruit and vegetable alphabet scavenger hunt
The following quiz has been taken from the Enchanted Learning website.
- I have reduced the number of questions to 15 to make it more manageable and to focus on some of the more common fruit and vegetables.
- You can print the questions out and give a copy to each child. They can work in small groups depending on how many computers you have at your disposal and the size of your class.
- Use the online picture dictionary at the Little Explorers section of Enchanted Learning http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Cisfor.shtml where they can click onto the first letter of the word and then use the pictures to help them find the fruit or vegetable. They can also check their answers with the writing underneath each picture.
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Name a fruit that starts with "A." It is white on the inside and can be red, yellow, or green on the outside. |
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Name a long, thin fruit that starts with "B." It is yellow on the outside and white on the inside. |
| Name a long, thin, orange vegetable that grows underground. It starts with a "C." |
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Name a vegetable that is green on the outside and white on the inside. It starts with "C." |
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Name a sweet fruit that grows in bunches on vines. It starts with "G." |
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Name a sour, yellow fruit that starts with "L." |
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Name a green, leafy vegetable that tastes good in salads. It starts with an "L." |
| Name three sweet fruits that start with the letter "P" and grow on trees. |
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Name a tiny, round green vegetable that grows in pods. It starts with "P." |
| Name a vegetable that is brown on the outside and white on the inside. It grows underground and starts with the letter "P." |
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Name an orange vegetable that can be made into pie. It starts with "P." |
| What do you get when you dry a grape? It starts with "R." |
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Name a sweet, red fruit that starts with "S." |
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Name a soft, red fruit that starts with "T." It is not sweet. |
Here is the link to the original quiz
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/classroom/K1/fruitvegquiz.shtml
Five a day
There has been a move in recent years to encourage people to eat more healthily. It is highly recommended that we eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day. There are a lot of educational resources on the internet that can help you to make this a very interactive subject.
- Each child can fill out a chart at home with their family as they eat their fruit and vegetables during the week. This educational chart categorizes the food into colours.
http://www.5aday.com/pdfs/kids/track/trackcolor01.pdf
- The second chart has been set up as a challenge. Children and their families are given a brief explanation as to what a portion is. They then have to note down each time they have fruit or vegetable portion in a day and aim to make it to five per day. http://www.5aday.com/pdfs/kids/track/serving.pdf
- Here there is a selection of colouring pages for the younger primary and a few games for the slightly older primary children you teach.
http://www.5aday.com/html/kids/coloring.php
Recipes
It is very unlikely that you can actually have access to a kitchen in your school in order to make a recipe but there’s nothing stopping you from teaching them the language they need to follow the recipe at home. They could feedback the following week as to how easy it was to make and how tasty it was.
- Here is a fruit inspired recipe written by a child with pictures to accompany as well as questions to answer and ideas for further questions the children can write themselves about the recipe.
http://www.wholefamily.com/aboutyourkids/child/food_7.html
- This is another recipe in the same style with great pictures for each stage.
http://www.wholefamily.com/aboutyourkids/child/cooking_3.html
Internet links
- This link gives you some free clipart on the subject of cooking that you can use for flashcards to introduce the relevant language they need to carry out a recipe.
http://www.lucylearns.com/free-cooking-clip-art.html
- Three colouring pages of fruits.
http://www.coloring.ws/fruit.htm
By Jo Bertrand
