Slide outline for Lesson 6.1. Twelve slides, one day. The ten-step slide and the four food slides become the review deck before the Food Systems Quiz. [Sal: photos of your own store and your own milk carton beat stock photos here.]
Trace a Food From Farm to Plate
- Unit 6: From Farm to Table
- Lesson 6.1, Topic 6.1 Where Food Comes From
- Today: four teams, four foods, one wall
Teacher notes
Image: a supermarket dairy case, shot straight on, full and ordinary.
Leave this up as students enter. Say nothing about the activity yet.
Do now
- Name one thing you ate this morning
- How many people worked on it before it got to you?
- Write a number and the name of one job
Teacher notes
Take four numbers out loud, low to high, and write them on the board. Most students write one to three. Keep those numbers visible; the gap is the lesson.
This carton
- About eight days old
- Six buildings
- Three trucks
- Nineteen people got paid
Teacher notes
Image: a single half gallon carton of milk on a plain counter.
This is the hook. Hold up the real carton while this slide is on. Then: "Today your team maps every one of those steps for one food."
The ten steps
- Grow or raise
- Harvest
- Process
- Package
- Transport
- Store, then Sell, then Cook, then Eat, then Leftovers and waste
Teacher notes
Image: a horizontal chain of ten simple icons, left to right, with an arrow between each.
Say the rule out loud: every food goes through these, and some steps happen more than once. Students copy the ten steps onto the recording sheet and circle the two they had never thought about.
Milk, all ten, in sixty seconds
- Dairy farmer, milking technician, tanker driver
- Plant operator, filler line worker
- Warehouse picker, delivery driver, stock clerk, cashier
- You. And whoever empties the fridge
Teacher notes
Image: five small photos in a row: cows in a barn, a milking parlor, a tanker truck, a filling line, a dairy case.
Walk it once, fast, naming the job at each step. Do not let this run past a minute; the teams do the work, not you.
Rules of the trace
- Ten real step cards, two decoys
- Order them on your wall path
- Decoys go in the "does not belong" box
- Write the job, the time, and the cost on your sheet
- Be ready to defend your order
Teacher notes
Assign the four teams and the four foods. Hand out the shuffled card sets.
Team 1, MILK
- About 6 to 12 days from cow to glass
- About 19 people paid
- Cold the whole way
Teacher notes
Image: a refrigerated tanker truck at a loading dock.
Team 2, BREAD
- About 9 months in the ground, then 3 days
- About 15 people paid
- No refrigeration anywhere
Teacher notes
Image: a wheat field with a combine, next to a bakery cooling rack.
Team 3, BANANA
- About 2,000 miles or more
- About 22 people paid
- Cut green on purpose, ripened here on a schedule
Teacher notes
Image: green bananas in a box with a plastic liner, then the same bunch yellow on a store shelf.
Team 4, CHICKEN NUGGET
- 6 to 7 weeks to raise, up to 9 months frozen
- About 25 people paid, the most of the four
- Already fully cooked before you buy it
Teacher notes
Image: a frozen food case, and beside it a nugget cut in half.
Find the T and the C
- T on the step that takes the longest
- C on the step that adds the most to the price
- Then answer: does the farmer get the biggest share?
Teacher notes
Do not answer the farmer question. Let the wall answer it. Every one of the four foods says no.
Exit card
- The step I never thought about is ___
- And the person who does it is a ___
Teacher notes
Two students read a line. Sort the cards into "got it" and "needs more." Leave the four wall paths up; Lessons 6.2, 6.3, and 6.5 all tape onto them.