Suggested introductory activities for teaching 'The History of Food and Farming'
Whole class activities
These activities should prepare children for the content and concepts they will encounter whilst studying the unit as a class or individually. The teaching activities should also promote discussion, sharing of ideas and thinking skills around the general topic of food and farming through the ages.
Activity 1: Discussion of topic in pairs or small groups
Example Discussion: Inventions
Which invention does your group/pair think was the best invention - Frozen food or bar codes on foods in supermarkets?
- Purpose to get children thinking about food inventions to do with food and shopping for food a modern context. Devote a short period of time to buzz group discussion. Make a note of some of the children's main ideas.
- Use this activity as an introduction and now take children back to a time when there were no frozen peas or no bar codes on food items.
- Examples
- What about a time when food could not be frozen? What difference might that have made to how food was sold?
- How was food preserved in the past? Teaching here would look at how food was slated, dried, and smoked.
- What would shops have been like if there were no bar codes? This might allow the children to consider shops at different periods in time. They might then interview a shopkeeper who worked at a time when prices had to be remembered etc. - Who invented X game. Children might be asked to find through a matching or reading task who invented certain food items and when; examples - cornflakes (Kellogg Brothers); frozen foods (Clarence Birdseye)
Activity 2: Study of an old picture
Children are asked in small groups to study a picture and to select any items in the picture concerning food or farming.
Example: A picture of a kitchen in the past
- Children might notice an eggbeater, a griddle pan, a kettle or pot suspended on a crane, an old weighing scales, a skillet, a churn etc.
- During a lesson period the teacher could help the children to understand the significance of each item in the preparation or preservation of food.
- They could speculate on why these items are no longer in common usage.
- Sorting and matching: Using jumbled explanations children could order information by placing the explanatory text under/with the correct word - Example: Skillet: a skillet was a small frying pan. It was often used to cook….
- Consolidation. Recall. Children could draw one or two of the items and write some information about it.