Literacy Today: We opened up our discussion today about where do we see words? We also chatted about what is reading? The consensus on both was that reading occurs only in picture books, in the library and on websites. As well, we talked about what is cereal and made a word web of ideas sharing our ideas. We discussed the Froot Loops as a text that we can read. The children noticed bright colours, numbers and a cartoon of a toucan.
Through our conversations, the children began to notice that were many different types of “s’s” on the box. I asked if one of the s’s was the real one, but the kids said that they were all the same letter but they looked different. Through that, we chatted about “font”. We discussed the toucan and was it a photograph of a toucan or a cartoon? We wondered why that this was done. Was it because that toucans ate Froot Loops or was there another reason?
We talked about the numbers on the box and what that meant. Students wondered why there was a game on the back of the box and we discussed some reasons why they did that and students said “maybe it was for kids to play”. Further, We discussed the nutrition information on the side of the box and why some of the information was written in the language of French. One student said, why is “fruit” spelled that way? Is there really fruit in the box? We questioned if there was.
We wondered if all Froot Loops boxes all looked the same, so we explored some boxes in Japan, China All in all, a really rich text discussion about purpose, audience, art, colour, words on a cereal box.
We then watched some 3 Froot Loops commercials on You Tube, and discussed and questioned who do we think the ads were for…mommies and daddies or kids like them.
You could try an activity like this at home with any sort of cereal or food around packaging.
Bryan Woods