Virginia Beach City Public Schools

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Title: World Hunger

Topic: Global Awareness
Designers: Hannah Dougherty

Course: Geography, Economics,

Oral Language, Mathematics
Grades: 3rd

Stage 1: Desired Results

Established Goals:

Students will open their hearts and minds to learn about world hunger.
Understandings: Students will
understand that
Hunger is a global problem, but
also a solvable problem.
There is enough food to feed the
world. It just isnt distributed
properly.

Essential Questions:
How many people in the world
suffer from world hunger?
Why does world hunger exist?
What countries have the most
hungry people and why?

Students will know

Students will be able to...

One out of nine people in the world

suffer from hunger.

The seven continents: Asia, Africa,

North America, South America,
Europe, Antarctica, Australia.

Opportunity cost: what is given up

when making a choice.

Utilize fraction skills to identify that

one ninth of the world population
suffers from hunger. (SOL 3.3 a)

Identify seven continents and use

critical thinking to identify which
continents that are the most food
insecure. (SOL 3.5 a)

Apply opportunity cost to what

hungry people give up in an
attempt to attain food. (SOL 3.9)

Stage 2: Assessment Evidence

Performance Tasks:

Key Criteria:

Demonstration of one in nine hungry people

in the world.
Group simulation with the seven continents,
where starbursts represent food.
Discussion about causes and solutions to
world hunger.

Students will demonstrate comprehension

through oral communication skills.
(SOL 3.1 a, b, c, e)

Other Evidence:
Students will be asked to fill out a post survey at the end of the lesson to demonstrate
what they learned.
Stage 3: Learning Plan-

Virginia Beach City Public Schools

Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Introduction (10 Minutes)
Introduce myself.
Hook Ask students about their favorite foods.
Ask for nine volunteers to come to the front of the room.
Distribute eight plates with pictures of food on them, and one empty plate.
Explain to the students that this is a representation of the worlds population.
Have the students identify hunger as a fraction of the worlds population (1/9th).
Ask the student with the empty plate how they feel. Are they sad?
Ask the students with the full plates how they feel. Would they be willing to share?
Activity (15 minutes)
Step 1: Give each student a colored dot (7 colors in total). Place larger colored dots on seven
tables, and ask the students to go to the table with their color. Distribute starbursts based on the
chart below, which reflects the distribution of food resources based on continent. Tell the class
that they have two minutes to do what they like with the starbursts.
Table
Continent
Number of
Group of 20 children
starbursts
(adjust based on class size)
1
Africa
1
3
2
Asia
4
11
3
Europe
9
2
4
Latin America
1
2
5
North America
10
1
6
Australia
5
1
7
Antarctica
0
0
Step 2: Once the children have eaten all the starbursts, ask them the following:
How did you feel when you saw how much other groups got?
How did you divide the starbursts within your group?
Did you do anything to get more starbursts or did you give any away?
How did you feel about eating a large/small amount?
How did the other tables respond to you?
Is this distribution fair? Why/why not? What would make it fair?
What do you think the seven tables represent?
Step 3: Inform the children that the tables represent continents. Ask each group to chat amongst
themselves and to guess which continent they are. Reveal the correct continents with color coded
map.
Step 4: Give each group one of the following questions to discuss, and then ask them to feed back
to the class. (There will be 2 tables answering each question).
Should people have the right to food? What if they cannot afford it? What about ideas like
fairness, equality and sharing?
If you lived in one of the poorer continents, what are some of the other things that you may not
have? (Explain Opportunity Cost)
Can you resolve the food situation? Who should be responsible for ensuring the right to food?
Families? Charities? Big companies? The government?
Explain Read to Feed Fundraiser (5 minutes)
Pass out booklets (for students to take home)
Explain fundraiser where students read as many books as they can in a month, and ask sponsors
to donate to the World Food Program for every book they read. There will be a prize for the 3 rd
grade class that reads the most books.
Ask students to take action as hunger heroes.
Ask the students to fill out an exist survey to demonstrate what they learned.
In case of extra time answer questions students have about world hunger.
*Lesson plan adapted from
https://www.concern.net/sites/www.concern.net/files/media/page/red_alert_for_hunger.pdf

Virginia Beach City Public Schools

Department of Curriculum and Instruction