Name: Amanda Berg
Title: Follow that Food- Where Food Comes From
Time Needed: Day 1- 2 hours, Day 2- 45 minutes
Subject Area/Topic: Social Studies- Food Justice
Grade Level: 3rd
Essential Questions of Unit:
1. What is the relationship between privilege, poverty, and consumption?
2. What are the implications of access to nutritious food for a community?
3. How do we as students become involved in the food justice movement?
Guiding Questions of Lesson:
1. Where does food come from?
2. How does it get to us?
3. How far does food travel?
4. Where do we obtain food in our community?
Materials:
-Book: “Follow that Food” by Buffy Silverman
-Digital cameras
-Notebooks
-Writing Utensils
-Cards with different situations for each group
-Colored Pencils
-Blank paper
MMSD Curriculum Standards Connections:
Geography:
1.Create a community or neighborhood map.
Economics:
4.Show how people are both producers and consumers of goods and services.
5. Give examples of how economic resources in the home, school, and community are limited (scarcity) and how people must make choices about how to use these resources.
NCSS Standards Connections:
NCSS Standard 5: Individuals, Groups, and Institutions
NCSS Standard 7: Production, Distribution, and Consumption
NCSS Standard 9: Global Connections
Elementary Education Standards Connections:
Standard 6: Connects School and Community
Standard 8: Employs Varied Assessment Practices
Standard 10: Employs Varied Instructional Strategies
Lesson Objectives:
1. Students will learn where food can be obtained in their own neighborhood, including grocery stores, markets, restaurants, other stores, or gardens.
2. Students will use Google Maps to locate places where food can be obtained in the neighborhood of their school.
3. Students will learn that oftentimes food travels long distances to get to their neighborhood, and the measure of that distance is called food miles.
4.Students will examine and map the distance one food item travels from the location it was grown to their table and compare the results with other students.
5. Students will use Google Maps to calculate the distance their food item traveled.
6. Students will begin to consider the meaning of food justice and if everyone is equally able to obtain nutritious food.
Lesson Context:
Lesson Opening:
Procedural Steps:
Day 1:
Day 2:
Lesson Closure:
Assessments Strategies:
Title: Follow that Food- Where Food Comes From
Time Needed: Day 1- 2 hours, Day 2- 45 minutes
Subject Area/Topic: Social Studies- Food Justice
Grade Level: 3rd
Essential Questions of Unit:
1. What is the relationship between privilege, poverty, and consumption?
2. What are the implications of access to nutritious food for a community?
3. How do we as students become involved in the food justice movement?
Guiding Questions of Lesson:
1. Where does food come from?
2. How does it get to us?
3. How far does food travel?
4. Where do we obtain food in our community?
Materials:
-Book: “Follow that Food” by Buffy Silverman
-Digital cameras
-Notebooks
-Writing Utensils
-Cards with different situations for each group
-Colored Pencils
-Blank paper
MMSD Curriculum Standards Connections:
Geography:
1.Create a community or neighborhood map.
Economics:
4.Show how people are both producers and consumers of goods and services.
5. Give examples of how economic resources in the home, school, and community are limited (scarcity) and how people must make choices about how to use these resources.
NCSS Standards Connections:
NCSS Standard 5: Individuals, Groups, and Institutions
NCSS Standard 7: Production, Distribution, and Consumption
NCSS Standard 9: Global Connections
Elementary Education Standards Connections:
Standard 6: Connects School and Community
Standard 8: Employs Varied Assessment Practices
Standard 10: Employs Varied Instructional Strategies
Lesson Objectives:
1. Students will learn where food can be obtained in their own neighborhood, including grocery stores, markets, restaurants, other stores, or gardens.
2. Students will use Google Maps to locate places where food can be obtained in the neighborhood of their school.
3. Students will learn that oftentimes food travels long distances to get to their neighborhood, and the measure of that distance is called food miles.
4.Students will examine and map the distance one food item travels from the location it was grown to their table and compare the results with other students.
5. Students will use Google Maps to calculate the distance their food item traveled.
6. Students will begin to consider the meaning of food justice and if everyone is equally able to obtain nutritious food.
Lesson Context:
- This unit fits into a larger, semester long, integrated unit examining people as consumers. This lesson fits into a social studies unit on the politics of access to nutritious food and the relationship between access and privilege. In science, students have already been learning about nutritious food, making healthy food choices, and gardening practices. This lesson will be an introduction to the idea of considering where food comes from and what implications result.
Lesson Opening:
- To begin our lesson, as a class we will pull up our neighborhood on Google Maps and brainstorm a list of all the places in our neighborhood where we can obtain food (grocery store, garden, farmers market, restaurant, gas station, school cafeteria, etc). I will then ask students to make predictions about where they think most of the food they eat comes from. We will record our predictions prior to our field trip.
Procedural Steps:
Day 1:
- We will then be taking a walking field trip to a grocery store, a weekly farmers market, and the garden of a student’s parent. We will bring cameras and take photos and notes of the different fruits and vegetables we find and where their labels (or growers) say they have come from.
- Upon returning to the classroom, we will look at the pictures and notes we took and make a list of where the foods came from within three different categories: from Wisconsin, from the United States, from another country. We will separate what we found into each category and decide where most of the food we saw came from.
Day 2:
- We will then read excerpts from the book, “Follow that Food” (a children’s book which looks at a pizza and follows all the ingredients from that pizza from their origin to the pizza being consumed) discussing that the food we eat is comprised of many ingredients and can come from many different places. I will ask students questions about all the different sources that provided ingredients for the pizza (featured in the book) and what ingredients/foods they think are more expensive or less expensive to make and transport.
- Students will then be split into groups of three and given a card with a vegetable and a story of how that vegetable got from the farm to their house. The card will either feature a vegetable from the grocery store, from the farmers market, or from a community garden. If the food needed to travel, the card will also tell the millage that was traversed during the vegetable’s journey from farm to table. Students will look up the origin of the vegetable on Google Maps, and using that resource, adding up the total number of food miles the vegetable traveled and constructing their own map representing how that vegetable got from where it was grown on the farm to the table.
- Each group will present to each other their vegetable, their map of how it got from the farm to their table, and the total number of food miles traveled.
- We will then engage in a whole group discussion of the vegetables that traveled the furthest, why that might be, which vegetables they think would be the most expensive to purchase and why, and discuss the benefits/challenges of each method of obtaining food. We will review the places we thought of that food can come from, and how the distance a food travels might play a role in what food is available and how much it costs. I will also prompt them to make predictions on if they think all communities have a access to the same foods.
Lesson Closure:
- As a way of closing the lesson, I will ask students to make a brief journal entry about any thoughts they have regarding food and who has access to good food and what they think is meant by the term “food justice” and if they know anything about the food justice movement.
Assessments Strategies:
- I will first pay particular attention to who is sharing ideas during our discussions, and ensure to open up opportunities for partner sharing as well as guarantee all voices are heard. I will informally listen to discussion and the results of our list of where food can come from to see what students already know about the origins of their food. I will use the small group presentations as a manner of assessing if students understand the concept of food miles and can articulate the journey a vegetable goes on from farm to table. I will also be listening to our closing discussion to assess how students are thinking about food distribution after our initial introduction and their ideas about the access of other communities. I will also be reading students’ journal entries before continuing the unit as a way of gauging what knowledge the students are already coming to the unit with, where gaps in their understanding might be, and how I can tailor my instruction to best meet their needs.