Foods of Pondicherry

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In EVS, the theme ‘food’ spans across all three grades. In grade three, students are expected to gain an understanding of the different foods we eat, their sources, the different methods of cooking and the utensils used in cooking. In grade four, the lessons deal with farming and processing of farm produce. In grade five, the lessons discuss how food is digested in our body. It further deals with the issues faced by the farmers in farming.

The content in the textbook is engaging and meaningful for the students to develop a holistic understanding of the theme ‘food’. However, constant support is needed to bridge the content gaps in the textbook as well as the literacy gaps of our students. The project discussed here aims at bridging those gaps, by giving students opportunities to explore the theme contextually. It also gives them support in reading and writing through flash cards and posters.

Lessons covered: What is cooking, Story of food.

Classroom discussion:

What are the different foods that we eat at home? How are they prepared? What are utensils used for cooking?

All students need to be given opportunities to share their responses. Relevant responses such as names of foods, names of utensils, terms for the processes of cooking etc. can be written on the board. This would help the teacher get a sense of the prior knowledge of the students.

What is your favorite food?

Teacher should encourage all students to respond. Responses need to be noted down on the black board against the names of the respective students. Students can share names of multiple food items.

How is your favorite food prepared?

Give students time to narrate how their favorite food is cooked. The narration should have step by step processes.

Ask students to create a book on their favorite food. The book will have a description of how their favorite food is prepared and what are the different utensils required for it. Teacher could try and ensure that students work on a variety of foods.

Word card game: Give the word cards of ‘cooking methods’ and ‘utensils’ to the students; ask them to try and read each word, keeping aside those words which they are not able to read. When the discussion on recipes and utensils are carried out, students can again be asked to identify the words that are used, and show the corresponding word cards to the class.

Literacy support: These word cards can be given to the students during any of the activities, as an aid. This will help them get exposed to the new words contextually. For example, the word ‘steaming’ can be discussed in the context of cooking idli.

Link to resources

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Contest- Please try the below mentioned ideas in your classroom and submit to us your students work to win exciting prizes.

Exploration:

1) Creating a recipe album: As an extension to the discussion on the different processes of cooking, this project aims to develop a ‘picture recipe book’.

Classroom activity: A sample can be done on the board. For example- cooking of chapatti involves taking flour, water, vessel to knead, salt etc. Teacher could draw these on the board and label them. The next step involves the mixing of the flour with water and salt to make the dough. The teacher can draw the dough and label it. Next, the dough is rolled into small balls and each ball flattened. Draw pictures of stove, tawa, oil and label them.

This is a rough illustration of the process; ask students their opinion of the drawing; make necessary changes. The pictures will introduce terms such as flour, water, oil, salt, pan, stove, roller, chapatti etc.

Ask students to copy the words and pictures onto their notebooks. Students can later illustrate the process of cooking their favorite food and bring it to class. The recipe albums can then be labelled. Students can use the word cards to do the labelling.

Link to the resource:

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Draw your kitchen: Students can be asked to draw a picture of the kitchen in their house. They need to include all that they see in the kitchen- utensils, raw materials for cooking etc. Once the students have brought their drawings, the teacher can help them label it. A discussion can be done on the utility of each utensil and tool that has been drawn.

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Picture dictionary of utensils- A picture dictionary on vessels used can be done. It could include a picture of the utensil, its Tamil and English words and a sentence about which food is cooked in that vessel.

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Literacy support: During the project, students might struggle with some words. The word cards on ‘cooking processes’ and ‘utensils used in the kitchen’ can be used as an aid here. The teacher can give the cards to the students and help them in reading it. Students can be asked to sequence the ‘process of cooking’ cards for a particular food.

Plants as food- A classroom discussion can be done on the different foods eaten at home; a list can be written on the board. Students can then be asked to categorize them into food from plants and food from animals.

This discussion can be led to exploring food from plants. The class can be encouraged to create an album of different plants that are used for food. They could write the name of the plant, the part of the plant that is cooked and the name of the dish; if they are interested, even the recipe on how to cook the dish can be added.

Sl. No.	Name of the plant	Part of the plant cooked	Name of the dish	Recipe

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Assessment

Sentence cards which have the processes of cooking various foods can be given to the students. They will have to arrange them based on the sequence of processes in which a particular food is cooked.
Names of cooking methods and utensils will be listed; students can be asked to match the cooking methods to the utensils given.
Crossword puzzle- statements describing each cooking method can be given and the responses will have to be filled in a crossword puzzle
Word hunt- identifying and circling words related to kitchen and cooking
Students can be given a picture of a kitchen with different utensils and asked to label them.