Food Waste in School Day 2

Your Name: Jaqueline Pearson

Title of Lesson: Food waste
Grade: 2nd
STANDARDS
Strand 2: World History Concept 1: Research Skills for History PO 2. Place historical
events from content studied in chronological order on a timeline.
LESSON SUMMARY/OVERVIEW
On day two students will learn about where their food comes from and where it goes after it is
thrown in the trash. Students at this age are slightly unaware for all the stages food goes through
from the farms to production, to stores to their homes or to the school and what happens to the
food once it goes out in the trash. Using system thinking students will learn about the most
important events for how food comes to be in front of them. During foods journey, students
will learn about waste that happens and how much waste happens before it ever reaches there
plate
OBJECTIVES
create a timeline of chronological event in foods lifespan
list key points in waste on foods journey
compare the amount of food wasted before it reaches their plate to the amount wasted
when they are done
ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION
Student will create a neat timeline with accuracy
PREREQUISITE KNOWLEDGE
Complete Day 1 lesson and have displayed the visible representation of food waste they
and their classmates created

MATERIALS

Construction paper
Timeline Handout
glue
pencils
color devices
video projector
whiteboard/ markers
dot camera

VOCABULARY/KEY WORDS
Timeline
System Thinking
TEACHING PROCEDURES
Start by prompting the question: Where do you think the school food comes
from?
list all responses student give on the board off to the side
Move on to Where do you think food goes after it's thrown in the trash cans?
Using a dot camera show a picture of a farmer
Ask students what agriculture is
State that agriculture is farming (the occupation of cultivating land, raising crops,
and feeding, breeding, and raising livestock (from dictionary.com)). Explain that
agriculture is the beginning of the food industry process
From the farm to the table
Production
Ground preparation, cultivation, fertilizing, spraying, harvesting, clean-up
for next season
Assembly
Food from many farmers is brought to a central place for processing
Processing
Cleaning, sorting, packaging and changing products from its original form
by slicing, drying, freezing, etc
Shipping
From processing plant to distribution center
Distribution
Final product passes through one or more distribution centers
Examples: wholesale market, chain store, farmers markets
Final product made available to consumers who normally travel to pick it
up
Preparing food to be eaten
Create a timeline with the student
Do some of the time line with student, draw images for each of the stage the food
goes through to get to their plate
Student have 20 minutes work on timeline
Gather students at reading center and read The Story of Miguel's Tomatoes
Have students answer question about the event the tomato went on its life journey
How does it compare to our timeline
How much waste do you think happens from the farm to your plate
Drawing a circle and cutting it in half to represent the next statistic
50 percent of the loss happens early in foods life: due to inefficient
harvesting, spoilage, inadequate processing, obsolete transport
technologies and other systemic problems.
43 billion pounds of food
Making a small dot to represent the classroom waste amount

 How do those numbers compare to the amount of waste we

all created yesterday during our lunch.
Does this drawing make wasting food any less important
For tomorrow we are going to look at where the food goes after it is lost before
reaching are plates and where it goes after we throw it away

RESOURCES
http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/crops-1-where-does-food-come-from/
http://littlekittys.wikispaces.com/The+Story+of+Miguel's+Tomatoes

WAYS OF THINKING CONNECTION

For extended questions, students can take what they learned in school about how much food they
and their classmates waste and see how much food is wasted in their homes.