World Food Basket Topic

During our inquiry unit on "World Food Basket" , we used pictures showing the weekly  grocery shopping of families from all around the world. The journalist had researched how much each family had spent. Since it was for an English newspaper, the amount was given in Pounds.

Each student 'adopted' one family.  This great resource helped us to study some geography and maths in a fun way.

We soon realized that in order to compare what those families spending was, we needed to convert pounds into NZ dollars, so we had to research exchange rates, once we found out, this lead us to round up  and  multiply 3 digit numbers. Some students discovered that there are many different types of money around the world and that there are quite a few different types of dollars which don't have the same value. We also learnt about conventions to write amounts : they are the opposit in French and English.

Sophia and Ciel with their families from Greenland and Germany. What a gap between their spendings !

We discussed differences between families, and the amount process food versus fresh food. We were amazed to see that the Malian family would spend 32 NZ dollars  per week for 15 people, while the Luxembourg family would spend almost NZ $ 600 for 4 people!!

                                                       A World Food Basket in NZ dollars

Students located all the countries on our class world map and made a sign for their own country. Then we all sat outside on a fantastic giant world map drawn by Pauline and Delphy. Each student sat  in their country's place.

Axelle