Food Chain and the story of The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson

The idea for this unit came up with one of my son´s bed stories. The Gruffalo is one of his favourites and my husband reads it to him very often and I think that it´s a very nice story.

The objectives for this unit are focus on a Science lesson. I chose this story for a Science project I did for my Primary Teaching Degree at The Pontifical University of Salamanca. Finally, I adapted this lesson for the CLIL Unit.

This is the result so far, as I might make changes as I develop this unit in the classroom and any suggestions and feedback are always welcome.

 The objectives are:

1. Learning outcomes  / Evaluation criteria

At the end of this unit the students will be able to: 1.    Identify the different trophic levels. 2.    Say who eats what in the food chain. 3.    Make a simple trophic chain /food chain. 4.    Know that animals and plants are essential to each other. 5.    Learn about some differences in eating times and habits in different countries.

The language content and communication is mainly the following:

Vocabulary

Nouns: Mouse, snake, owl, fox, nut, claws, tusks, jaws, teeth, tail, wart Herbivore, mammals, carnivore, producer, decomposer (…) Adjectives: little, terrible, astounding, nice, kind (…) Verbs: eat, I´m going, I´m meeting, know, rumble, ran, slid, walked (…) Prepositions: in, on, by (…)

The nouns refer to the different animals that appear in the story and some other nouns refer to the features of the gruffalo and to the main components of the food chain.

The adjectives, verbs and prepositions also appear in the story.

The structures:

Routines:	Contents:	Classroom management:
Greetings, take the register, calendar, weather, etc. What´s your favourite animal /food? I like … My favourite animal /food …	Grammatical structures: Present simple, past (affirmative, negative, interrogative) Simple present passive structure taught just by repetition. Phonics	Listen, Write, Think, Read, Place… Can you repeat that, please? Pay attention, be quiet, please (…) Praising: Excellent, well done, good job, etc. Put things away, Line up, Let´s go to the playground, put the animals in the correct order (…)

The structures for the daily routine can be the same or they can be changed or adapted to the routine that the teacher normally uses in his/her own classroom or according to the students’ progress through their year.

The grammatical structures also follows the story structures and the phonics refer to the rhymed words that we find in the story as well.

The Classroom management language can also be adapted or changed according to the teacher´s practice.

Sessions                 :

1.    Sessions start with the daily routine questions and interaction(whole class)

After the daily routine, the teacher introduces the vocabulary for the unit with a brainstorming activity.

Then using the flashcards, the students will name the pictures shown.

Then, we present on the board the KWL diagram: What we know, what we would like to know, leaving blank the last space (L: what we have learnt) as we will complete this part in the last session.

Each student complete the table (KW) individually.

We can share ideas and write them on the board.

The students watch the video of the Gruffalo and the teacher asks them simple questions:

“How many animals are there in the story?” “What type of animals can see in the story?”

Recap: The teacher recaps the key vocabulary for the next session.

2.     

Starting point: daily routine.

Recap on vocabulary using the flashcards and repeating the key vocabulary.

The students will complete some of the activity in the booklet, some of them individually like the activities colouring the adjectives and some other activities in pairs feeding back to the whole group. The teacher will circulate to check students ‘work.

In the last five minutes, the teacher can play the video again to reinforce vocabulary & pronunciation and the understating of the story once more.

3.     

In this session after the daily routine, where the teacher can add some extra different questions related to the topic we are studying, the focus is on the food chain and types of animals (mammal, reptile,…)

The teacher will show the students the PowerPoint presentation with examples of the food chain based on the story.

The teacher can print some pictures and ask some students to place the right picture in the correct place for the food chain, to show them an example.

The students will then individually complete the worksheets about food chain (bbc link).

Recap: vocabulary and main activities completed during this session.

4.     

In this session, the students will continue with the activities about the food chain.

The main activity for this class will be to complete worksheets about the food chain elements.

5.    Outdoor game:

This session takes place out of the classroom.

The students will be divided into groups of four. The teacher will put a poster up with the names of the elements of the food chain and each group will complete their chain.

Each team has a set of colour belts and one card attached to it with Velcro.

Each colour belt represents one of the elements of the chain.

They have to get the cards and stick them on the poster.

The first team to complete the chain wins.

6.     

This session is based on a nature trail book by the same autor of the Gruffalo. The students have to look for different samples of plants, insects or alternatively to draw the little animals or insects they see during the trip.