In our "Food Chains" unit we learn about the food chains that feed America, and we attempt to identify the problems our current food system causes, while uncovering some possible solutions to fix our food system in the future. This unit culminates in students creating a website which will share information, and attempt to guide the eating choices of their fellow Americans. While we use some supplemental texts, this unit is based on the book The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. |
Cover Art Compliments of Amisaday Cedeno
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Topic 1: Food, INC
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Our food unit always starts with the cinematic equivalent of a kick to the face. Food, INC is an incredibly powerful documentary that pulls back the curtain on the food industry. It's a great kick-off to our unit, because it creates such buy in from students that when we crack the spine of The Omnivore's Dilemma, the book practically reads itself. Also, images like "a golden river of corn" are really much more effective when seen. During the movie portion of this unit, we stop at particularly powerful images, and students make objective observations about them. Then, we practice making inferences, in this case, the inferences will connect the information in the documentary to students' own food choices.
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Monday, 1/27/2020 - Thursday, 1/30/2020: Food Inc. Viewing and Discussion
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Very Similar to our structured reading days, I guess I would call these four days "structured watching days." We'll pause meaningfully and have time to collect information, evidence, and images, and to reflect and explain what those images mean in terms of answering our essential question, both from the perspectives of the questions about our current food chains, and the possible solutions to our current food chains. What you'll see if you stop into our classroom these four days is a lot of quiet watching, a lot of engaged discussion, and some collaborative typing in preparation for the rest of the unit.
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**I cannot link the Food, Inc. documentary in its entirety because I bought it on Amazon. While I strive to offer a completely free curriculum, some resources cost money. Sorry.
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Friday, 1/31/2020: Food, Inc. Discussion
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Today, we will use a four-corner's discussion protocol to connect students' food choices with the reality shared in the documentary Food, INC. Ideally, students' responses will refer to the powerful imagery from the movie, and connect that imagery to their food choices or their thoughts about the food industry.
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"Research" Weeks
The "meat" of our unit, food pun intended, is made up of what we call our "research weeks." Basically, between The Omnivore's Dilemma text and the various and sundry TED talks that we've found, students are engaged in an inquiry-based research task to answer the questions listed on the top of our unit page, and on the connection tool, and in every discussion... They're free to find whatever answer the data suggest, and we go out of our way to find sources that support every possible interpretation of our current food systems.
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Day 1: TED Talk
Students will watch the TED Talk they choose on the first day of each "choice week." They'll use our digital Notice/Wonder chart to demonstrate their learning as they watch.
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Day 2 & 3: Close Read
This unit's texts are [shudder] paper-based. I know, it's painful for me too. all the links below are live, but we'll print physical copies of this unit's texts based on our student's requests. With a non-traditional unit like this, technology tools, even Google Classroom, are just not equipped to handle the level of student choice and differentiation I've built in.
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Day 4: Engage / Novelty
I've found that for students to remain engaged in a classroom, there needs to be some novelty built it. One day a week of novelty amidst well-practiced learning structures seems like enough to maintain student's attention. While not linked yet, our novel learning structures each week will be: Peardeck-Enhanced Slides, Mind Mapping, Four Lines, Two Circles, Four-Corner's Discussion
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Day 5: Web Design
Each week, students will turn the annotations from their connection tool into a beautifully written paragraph, and publish that paragraph onto their very own website! This is one of the coolest days, because it takes a few weeks before students realize that their website exists on the REAL internet. Like, really!
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The Omnivore's Dilemma Chapter Choices
Week 1: Industrial Food
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This week, students will select 1-3 chapters from the Industrial and Industrial Organic sections of The Omnivore's Dilemma depending on their reading level and past performance on assignments. Each time their task will be the same: to answer some general questions to demonstrate understanding, and to collect evidence and write explanations to answer our three research questions.
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ENL - Friendly Chapter ChoicesEnglish-speaking students will use the books themselves.
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The Farm
This chapter shares how farms have changed in our country over the last fifty years. Basically, the "farms" we imagine, and the farms that are pictured on our food packaging look nothing like the actual, industrial farms that provide all our food. |
From Farm to Factory
This chapter shares the impact of our use of fossil-fuel based nitrogen as our primary fertilizer, and the impact that it is having on the environment. If you're environmentally conscious, this chapter will really appeal to you. |
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The Feedlot - Turning Corn into Meat
This is a chapter that will appeal to students who love animals, because it shares how poorly treated our animals are on feedlots. They live sick lives in piles of their own feces. |
Fat from Corn
If you care about your health, this is the chapter for you. We'll learn about the health implications of eating a "variety" of foods that contains nutrients derived entirely from corn. |
Week 3: Local, Sustainable Food
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This week, students will select 1-3 chapters from the Local / Sustainable and the Hunter / Gatherer sections of The Omnivore's Dilemma depending on their reading level and past performance on assignments. Each time their task will be the same: to answer some general questions to demonstrate understanding, and to collect evidence to answer the questions identifying how these food chains provide some possible solutions to the problems caused by our current food system.
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TED Talks Choice Texts
Weeks 2 and 4:
In this short clip, Jamie Oliver shares his experience with kids from West Virginia the difference between real and processed chicken. Never has the problem with our food systems been more succinctly embodied. He goes on to share thoughts about the importance of teaching our kids about food, and sharing some staggering statistics about the amount of sugar our kids ingest JUST IN SCHOOL.
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Ann Cooper is the me of lunch ladies. Her speech about how she has drastically changed the lunch program in Berkeley, California is an inspiration, and ever time I plan a unit, I think of her. She shares some amazing insights about how to fund revolutionary change for our students diet, and the importance of getting kids on the right dietary track early in their lives, and in a formal way within the constructs of the school day. Ann, if you'd like to share lunch with me, look me up through my contacts page, we could drive some serious change together.
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We think that we NEED to use factory farms and the industrial food system just to keep up with the demand of our growing, human population, but that isn't actually the case according to Tristram Stuart. In this interesting talk full of food-waste imagery, easy to understand connections between crackers and the global food supply, and simple solutions that we can employ today, Stuart will win you over to the side of moving towards less waste, and a more sustainable future for our food.
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Detroit generally carries negative connotations. We hear "Detroit" and think about crime and the fallen glory of the American auto industry. Davita Davidson, on the other hand, sees Detroit as the positive epicenter for sustainable farming practices. Davidson talks about sustainable farming from both a business and a health perspective, and shares a message of hope.
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We are trained to hear the letters "GMO" and think "poison." We know they're somthing to avoid. Pamela Ronald, a geneticist, shares why that mentality may be false, and shares some insight into the role that genetically modified organisms have on our food system.
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We think of farms as the main source of food, and we worry about the environment from a land-based perspective. Jackie Savitz shares how the 2/3 of our planet covered in water could be the key to feeding the human population in the future in this interesting speech titled "Save the oceans, feed the planet."
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In his TED Talk: The killer american diet that's sweeping the planet, Dean Ornish shares how America's food systems are actually spreading to the rest of the world. In some ways, it's difficult for us to assess our own food systems because they've become part of our culture, but when we see the immediate, detrimental health impact on other countries, that's when it becomes easiest to evaluate our own food systems, and to see how some other countries are attempting to solve the problems we've caused.
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Web Design Project
Project DescriptionFor our food chains unit, we create and publish a website that answers the question: How will food become more than a health issue in the future? Click on some of the links below to see what amazing work our students have created. Students write evidence-based summaries of each food chain, and based on those descriptions, they craft a digital argument explaining whether or not each of four food chains should drive our future. There is no right answer! Each food chain has pros and cons, so students are free to truly explore their options.
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Success Skills
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Web Design Tools
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Food Chains Connection ToolOur connection tools have been met with wild approval from students, co-teachers, and parents alike. It's nice to deal with a single, predictable learning structure across units, with just 5%-10% difference to meet each unit's specific needs. This unit, you'll notice some color coding, and that the connection tool is based on problems and solutions, with no mention of the word "claim." While the [evidence-explanation] paired structures are still intact, the will never become an essay. They'll be used independently in conjunction with pictures, sections, and embedded videos to create a valuable web resource.
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This tutorial serves as the "nuts and bolts" tool of our web-design project. It is the one-stop shop for all things Google Sites. While this explains, with obvious arrows and annotations, exactly how to use the Google Sites software, just using the tools provided will do very little by itself. To create an effective website, it will be imperative to offer valuable information by incorporating the text from the Food Chains Connection Tool above, and to follow the advice shared in the web-design considerations Slides shared below.
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On the Importance of Photo LayeringStudents always go CRAZY with photo layering. They get excited so they create layers on layers on layers of incomprehensible photos. Do you know why art studios are always a sea of modern, minimalist white walls and lightly stained hardwood floors? To avoid photo layering. I've intentionally offered countless, positive examples of photo layering on my website.
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Hyperlinks - "Do's" and "Don'ts"Hyperlinks are so easy to do correctly that it's just an expression of digital laziness to put in long-form hyperlinks. I'll show you how to insert hyperlinks, in a variety of ways, and demonstrate how inserting hyperlinks correctly just leads to a cleaner, and more user-friendly digital tool.
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How to Create an Ideal HomepageThis tool offers advice specific to our Food Chains web-design project. It is not universal advice for anyone hoping to create an effective homepage. Below, I've linked some examples of effective homepages.
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Web Design Process [Sustained Inquiry Loops]
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This process is repeated four times: once for each week of the unit.
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Professional Website Evaluation |
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Web-Design Evaluation
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Super Student
Web-Design Exemplars |
Common Core Literacy Standards Addressed by this Project