Grocery Store Field Trip

Resource
Ideas for Action
Grade(s)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

What Is it All About?

Students tour a local grocery store to learn about the wide variety of vegetables and fruit available to consumers, the different forms they can take, and where to find them in the supermarket.

Why Do It?

Learn about thousands of different food and beverage options available at a grocery store, and how a store is laid out in ways that affect our choices.

How Do We Do It?

Student leaders plan a field trip to a grocery store.

Students meet with the store manager and/or key staff in certain departments who can share their expertise related to their area of the store.

Students look at how products are placed throughout the store (e.g., candy at checkout stand, sugar-sweetened cereals at eye level, refrigerated pop and energy drinks at the front of the store).

During and after the field trip, students discuss how the layout of the store might affect the choices that shoppers make.

Students write a letter or blog post about the experience and share something new they learned.

What Else Do We Need?

Nothing we can think of! Feel free to be creative.

How Do We Get Creative?

Consider having the various grocery store staff share their professional experience in the field and what schooling or experience was required for their employment.

If a field trip is not feasible, Students can accompany their parents to the grocery store, making notes to share later in class discussion.

Organize the field trip to go to a restaurant instead.

Meet with a dietician if possible, before or after the field trip.