Local or International?

 Local or international?

This was the main focus of our unit for this week. Grade 1s guessed whether the products shown to them are from Japan or not.

They tried different ways of identifying products from Japan. The first thing they looked at is the wording. According to them, the language used on the label tells information about the origin of the product. As this is usually true, then a follow up question was raised to push them to think further.

"How about some products that show more than one language (characters) on the label, how would we know where they are from?"

The Grade 1s explored the label further and saw that some labels have the name and/or the flag of the country where it originated. MADE IN... and PRODUCT OF... explicitly show the origin of the product.

Another information came up although this is not always correct; the first numbers on the bar code also show the origin of the product. I this matter, if the first two digits on the bar code is 49, then it is a product of Japan.

Next, we looked into raw products such as fruits and vegetables. The Grade 1 learners were grouped into 4 and were asked to sort out the raw products into two groups again: from JAPAN and NOT from JAPAN.

This is what they came up with:

Next week, we will explore local raw materials from Japan and from different countries and how the movement of the products happen. We will zoom in to the journey of food from field to table. We are hoping to achieve understanding of importation as well.