What Did You Eat Today? (Informazing) by David Drew

What Did You Eat Today? (Grades K–2)

Informazing series

by David Drew illustrated by Terry Denton

Which zoo animals eat flowers, rats, oranges and broccoli? All the information is in the tables, charts, calendars, column graphs, bar charts, and diagrams.

Grade level K–2

Visual literacy

Tables: to show a chimpanzee's diet

Bar graphs: to compare quantities of food eaten by sharks and bears

Calendars and clock faces: to indicate eating patterns of seals, sharks, and snakes

Column graphs: to measure how much tigers and tortoises eat

Column graph

Subject areas

English/Language Arts

Comparing fiction with nonfiction styles

Comparing information in words and graphs

Science/Technology

Food and nutrition

Mathematics

Reading and writing number words

Matching number words to quantities in diagrams

Counting amounts in bar graphs

Finding patterns in calendars and tables

Social Studies

Balanced and unbalanced diets

Caring for animals

Learning strategies

Using pictures to predict words and sentences

Accessing information from visual texts

Sample from the book

Bar graph

One-week calendar

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Ideas to get you started

This Big Book is a useful introduction to visual texts for K-2, as it includes so many different kinds: "bar charts" (or bar graphs), calendars, column graphs, and tables.
How do you "read" a visual text with the children? The best way is to show them the calendar or bar graph, and ask them questions about it. Here's how:
In the shark calendar above, read the line "But I don't get fed every day." Point out that what follows is a one-week calendar, and read the abbreviations of the days of the week. Say, "Mon is short for Monday. What would Tues be short for?" ("Tuesday!") And so on. Then ask, "Which days does the shark get fed?" (The blank days. The shark is fed only on days with a check mark.) Here is an opportunity to link literacy and mathematics: compare the checked days and the blank days and ask, "Most days the shark goes hungry: true or false?" (True) "What is the longest time the shark is hungry?" (2 days)
In the shark's bar graph, help the children to interpret the chart by asking them to count the prawns, fish and octopus. Then ask, "What animal does the shark eat most?" (Prawns) "What does it eat least?" (Octopus) In this way you are teaching the children to read visual texts for themselves. (In some editions of this book the word shrimp replaces prawns.)
After reading the book, talk about the nutrition issues of the visitor's diet (pages 16-17). Children can keep their own "food diary" by recording everything they eat (at home and school) in a day. They can make their own bar charts to record these foods. Display and discuss the results on the following day.