1 Print-based local resources

Mr Deo, an elementary teacher in Madhya Pradesh, describes how he uses food packaging to develop language awareness among his Class VI students.

Apart from the textbooks, I have few resources in my classroom. Last year I realised that the slogans, lists of ingredients and instructions on food packets lent themselves well to language-based activities.

I therefore started to collect empty, clean food packets and cartons and cans, and asked my relatives and neighbours to keep theirs for me too. Many packages were illustrated with colourful words, phrases and pictures [Figure 1].

Figure 1 Examples of writing on food packaging.

I brought the packaging into class and selected one to show one to my students. It was a mango drink carton. Several of my students recognised it as they drink it themselves.

I asked my students what ingredients they thought it contained. I invited a volunteer to read out the ingredients: ‘Water, mango, sugar, artificial flavouring, preservative’. I asked another to read out the slogan on the front, ‘For good health’. We discussed the ingredients and whether they were as healthy as the slogan claimed.

We looked for other writing on the carton. There was an instruction to serve the drink cold, and a request that the carton be disposed of carefully. I wrote the key words and phrases on the blackboard.

Next, I asked my students if they remembered what an adjective was. From the words written on the blackboard, I helped them identify some examples from the packaging (such as ‘good’, ‘artificial’ and ‘cold’). I asked the additional language speakers in my class how they said these adjectives in their home language.

I then organised my students into groups of three or four and asked them to examine the packet or carton they had been given, copy out the key words and phrases, discuss their meanings, and identify any adjectives among them.

We finished with a whole-class feedback session, during which each group called out the adjectives they had found in their allocated packaging. I listed these on the blackboard for everyone to copy. The one or two examples that were not in fact adjectives allowed for helpful clarification.

I have since repeated the activity, redistributing the packaging among the groups. However, on one occasion I asked my students to focus on verbs, and on another occasion, nouns. In each case, I began by inviting examples of these word forms from the mango drink packaging, before asking groups to look for examples on the packets they had been allocated.

The feedback sessions proved very interesting in clarifying my students’ conceptualisation of language. In the case of the verbs, for example, we noticed that these often took the form of imperatives (such as ‘serve’ and ‘dispose’). In the case of the nouns, we noticed that some were singular (‘carton’), some were plural (‘ingredients’), some were concrete and tangible (‘sugar’ or ‘water’), and some were abstract (‘health’).

Even now, my students sometimes present me with another example of an adjective, verb or noun that they have found on food packaging at home.