Science and Society

Planning the Food Benchmark Project

I would like your help in planning the Q2 benchmark for science and society.  This project will, of course, be based on our examination of food issues.

When SLA teachers plan a unit, we use a format called Understanding by Design (UbD).  This format has us think about what we would like you to learn, and then plan out how we like to get you to those goals.  These are the goals I had when I planned this unit:

1.  Students will be able to independently use their learning to…

•Evaluate their food choices based on a variety of health, economic, environmental, and political factors.

•Think about their current diet and health choices and consider making changes - even small, incremental changes - that could lead to a healthier lifestyle.

2.  Students will understand that…

•Food choices affect our body systems and health in general.

•Diet-related diseases are a result of imbalanced body systems.

•The US government has created policies and subsidies that affect our food system.

•Food systems both rely on and impact the natural environment (water, soils, sunlight, air, etc.)

3.  Essential Questions:

•What are the far-reaching ramifications of our food choices?

•What factors have contributed to the development of the current US industrialized food system?

•What governmental, economic, and societal structures are operating to keep this system in place?

•What are the components of the US food system?

•What are some of the alternatives to this system?

•How can we affect change on this system?

Keeping the above in mind, I’d like us to design a benchmark project that...

-Reaches an audience greater than me, you, and the other students in both sections of Sci/Soc.

-Shows me (and the audience) what you’ve learned about one or more of the food issues we’ve discussed.

-Shows evidence that you understand how these food issues have social, political, environmental, and health ramifications.

-Educates people about some of the things we’ve been discussing.

-Has some kind of social activism/”change the world” angle to it.

-Has at least one individual component that involves a personal reflection of your role in the larger food system and/or some changes you could make to your food choices, and what the impacts of these changes might be.

Brainstorm:

-Class cookbook:  each person/group submits a recipe, along with commentary on where the food came from, companies it came from, impacts of the ingredients.  Bake sale?  Raise money for some kind of food awareness thing or donate to an urban farm.

-Group mini field trips, come back and share what you learned.  Farms, tastykake factory?  Grocery store manager/TJ’s manager?

- The class’ own version of Food Inc. We can have groups and each group will take on a different chapter and make the movie more community based. (Interview parents, lunchaids, supermarket managers ect.)

- Create our own obesity prevention program with written, digital, or audio resources for people to follow.

~Compare and contrast different types of people and where they eat.  Different cultures?

-Urban Bake sale, a sale of a bunch of different foods (earlier mentioned foods from class cookbook) during lunch periods. profits go to urban farms to help them grow bigger and in turn provide more healthy,cheaper,”better”, food for sale.  Distribute educational materials at sale?

-Have a potluck dinner/lunch with only food that Michael Pollan would approve of.  Each person writes a description of the food, where the ingredients came from, etc,.

-Monitor what you eat for a week, measure the amt of calories, fats,etc.

-look into different location in philly, their proximity to good food, levels of diet-related diseases, etc.

-analyze nutrition labels, try to determine the healthiness of the food

-where does school lunch come from?

AIDANS IDEA:

Everyone in class makes a dish from local and healthy ingredients and write up a short peice about why it’s good for us and the earth, and then we have a potluck.

I like Aidan’s idea! - ashley w.

Aidan’s idea seems pretty decent. I like that we can eat it afterward. - Stefen M.