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Lesson plan: Getting hunger sorted out

From the Making a Meal of It! online resource

Age group: 7 - 11

Aims:
To encourage children to appreciate the distinction between hunger, starvation, and malnutrition.

What to do:
Although children may automatically assume that the major problem with lack of food is starvation, in fact this is an extreme and relatively rare problem. A far more common problem is that people do not have enough to eat over a period of time and may become malnourished, weak and ill. Eight hundred million people in the world are malnourished and two billion have a diet which does not contain enough essential vitamins and minerals.

Start by discussing the meanings of hunger, starvation, famine and malnutrition with the pupils, building on their own experience.

• Hunger: Discuss children’s own experience of being hungry, the fact that it was unpleasant and uncomfortable but that it stopped when they were next able to eat again.

• Malnutrition: Explain that malnutrition means suffering a lack of quantity and variety of food over a long period. People suffering from malnutrition may become weak or ill. You can illustrate this with examples from history that the children may be familiar with, for example, that in the past a lack of vitamins caused sailors to develop scurvy at sea and children to develop rickets.

• Starvation: Explain that starvation involves suffering an acute shortage of food. Starvation will eventually lead to death if people are not able to get access to food.

• Famine: A famine is an extreme shortage of food for a large number of people, caused by poor harvests or by food supplies being cut off or destroyed during wars or natural disasters. You can illustrate this with reference to reports of famine which children may have seen on television or stories such as the biblical story of Joseph and the famine in Egypt.

Then hand out the worksheet: Getting hunger sorted out which can be completed in groups in class or for homework. All the leaf boxes have questions in them and the children should match them to the answers which are in the apple boxes.

Curriculum links: