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Students will be able to understand where their food comes from by mapping out the life of a food item from the beginning of its life to when it reaches their plate using systems thinking.

Students will be able to identity how food can contribute to their footprint.

Students will be able to identify where local food is produced.

Student will be able to compare industrial food and local food by creating a diagram.

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·5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment.

·(Disciplinary Core Idea) ESS3.C Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life had major effects on land, vegetation, streams, ocean, air, and even outer space. But individuals and communities are doing things to help protect Earth's resources and environments. (5-ESS3-1)

·CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.8Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; summarize or paraphrase information in notes and finished work, and provide a list of sources.

·MS-ESS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.

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The reason I chose food’s impact on individuals’ footprint is that when I calculated my footprint, food was my major contribution. After learning the impact food has on my footprint, I became more aware of the types of food items I purchased and began making a more conscious effort to buy local food instead of food that has been transported in a truck for hundreds of miles. I realized that it is also the majority of my friend’s contribution to their footprint as well, therefore, it is something younger students should also be educated about.

I want to explore food, the systems behind how we get food to our table, and how each system affect our individual footprint since it does not only affect us as individuals but also the rest of the world and future generation. It is also a sustainable topic because once we can identify the systems that most impact our footprint we can make personal changes to how we shop or even what food we consume. By teaching students and exposing them to real-world problems there is potential they will think about changing their habits as a child rather than when they become an adult.
It is important for students to discover that food does not simply magically appear on their plate or lunch box but that there are systems behind how they get their food. It is also important for them to know how different systems can contribute differently to their footprint. This is relevant because food is one of the top contributors to individual’s footprint and one way to decrease someone’s footprint is to examine how the system of their food works and where change would best be implemented.

It is important for my elementary students to be open-minded and to have skills such as problem-solving in order to find solutions to decrease their footprint. This project will relate to science and math. It relates to science because we will discuss food and technology. It will also relate to math because I will be using mathematical languages such as increase, decrease, and other numbers.

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This resource can be useful for teachers since it outlines essential questions, learning objectives, key terms, materials and individual day plan outs. It is also helpful since it includes additional resources and standards incorporated.

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In this two-day lesson, students will be introduced to several issues related to the social, economic, and environmental impacts of our current food system, including food waste, food deserts, agricultural land use, and the environmental impacts of diet choices.

How Can We Improve Our Global Food System?
In this lesson, students will practice rapid ideation-an important step in design thinking-by brainstorming solutions to issues surrounding our current food system.

While playing Cornucopia -a fast-paced farm simulator-you manage a plot of land, planting crops based on a number of factors, in order to meet a variety of food orders. Keep an eye on your water meter and your crop yields, and earn technology upgrades to make your farm as successful as possible before the season ends.

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Exploring the Impacts of Feeding the World

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In this two-day lesson, students explore several issues surrounding our current global food system.

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This resource can be useful for a fellow teacher since clearly lays out the lesson plan by including key components. It also includes background information, procedure, discussion questions, and extensions. It is useful that extensions are included since students all work at different paces.

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David Casey, Analy High School
West Sonoma County Union High School District, California

Essential question: How can I understand my impact on the environment and our collective impact on the Earth?

Overview

The ecological footprint concept is a way to roughly measure the impact of a person's daily and long-term choices on the environment. People have become so accustomed to their diet, cars, homes, and energy usage that they don't realize that the Earth will not be able to provide the needed resources indefinitely. When students go online to calculate how many Earths it would take if everyone on the planet lives the way that they do, they will be astonished. For many students, it is the beginning of increased awareness about the delicate balance of the planet.

Objectives: Students will...

1. Increase their awareness of the impact of their choices on the Earth. This awareness is to result in a goal to reduce their personal impact (footprint).

2. Learn the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of a set of data.

Subjects: Mathematics (Statistics or a Statistics unit in General Math, Algebra 1 or 2)

Suggested Grade Level: 6 - 12

Time: 2 class periods (50 minutes each) or 1 block period

Materials:

Access to the Internet. If a class set of computers is available, it will take each student about 15 minutes to complete the questionnaire. If only a handful of computers are available, then the calculation for the number of acres needed to support each student's lifestyle will take a little longer.

Graph paper or poster paper

Calculators

Background Information

One possible introduction to the lesson could be a discussion of how much food a farm produces. Have students guess the number of acres in a small farm. Students might not even know how big an acre is, roughly 40,000 square feet or a square plot of land about 200 feet by 200 feet. Could 1 acre provide all the food needed for one person for one year? What about provide the materials needed to build a home? What about heating costs? Could the farm provide wood for a fireplace? Could the farm provide energy for equipment? Students may realize that a farm cannot provide gasoline or electricity (usually). So there are other resources needed to provide our comfort and lifestyle for a year. What is the averagenumber of acres to provide for the needs of our students? What is the greatest amount? What is the least amount? Suppose this number of acres were to be translated into the number of planet Earths needed if everyone on the planet lived as a member of the class does. What would be a reasonable number?

Procedure

1. Students will go online to the URL www.footprintcalculator.org/ or www.mec.ca/Apps/ecoCalc/ecoCalc.jsp. There are other sites that calculate an ecological footprint; you can do a Google search to find others. This site has 13 questions that students are to answer. From their answers, the site calculates the number of acres needed to sustain that person's choices. The site also converts the acres into the number of Earths needed to sustain the planet's population if everyone lived in the same manner.

2. When students have arrived at the number of acres and Earths, you may collect all of their data in one of several ways. Each student can write their values on the board, or if privacy is critical (and some students may feel awkward about how many Earths they are using), then students may write their values on a small piece of paper and the results could be collated, copied, and distributed the next day, without names attached.

3. Have students calculate the mean number of planets needed, and the mean number of acres needed to sustain the members of the class. Students should prepare a graph of the data, either in bar graph form, a number line, or a stem and leaf plot. Identify the high and low values for the class. How is the mean affected by these values?

4. Demonstrate how to calculate the standard deviation for a set of data. This measure of variation describes the spread of the data. If the standard deviation is more than 50% of the mean, then there may be some people in the class with large values for acreage or Earths.

For Discussion

1. What is the average number of acres for the students in the class? What is the average number of Earths needed?

2. Which statistic would you use if you wanted to point out the lack of awareness of the environment? Which statistic would you use if you did not want to alarm the public?

3. What is the biggest factor that contributes to a high number of acres? Or, which area do you think could conserve the most of the earth's resources?

4. Suppose you were to calculate the mean again eliminating the highest 3 values. Is the mean still greater than one Earth? What does that mean for future generations? Is it enough to change only the extreme lifestyles? Or does everyone need to change if we are to get the number down to below one Earth needed?What are the next steps? How can we carry this message to other people? The students might want to have their parents and other family members take the online questionnaire. Perhapslater in the year the class can repeat the lesson and see if the average number of acres has been reduced.

EXTENSIONS

1. Students can advertise their findings using shock-value propaganda.

2. Students can do a report comparing the average carbon footprints of countries world-wide. Once they collect the data, they can then analyze the data using basic statistics for the report. This would be a great project that could be nicely summarized on a poster board. Remind them that these kinds of reports often appear in newspapers and journals. An easy source of information is www.carbonfootprintofnations.com/content/calculator_of_carbon_footprint_for_nations/82/ which is an online calculator that will give students the per capita carbon footprint of all countries.

For the entire "How Big is Your Carbon Footprint" lesson, download the PDF.

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Lesson Plan: How Big is Your Carbon Footprint? (6-12)

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David Casey, Analy High School West Sonoma County Union High School District, California Essential question: How can I understand my impact on the environment and our collective impact on the Earth? The ecological footprint concept is a way to roughly measure the impact of a person's daily and long-term choices on the environment.

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This resource includes videos, a lesson plan, and student worksheets which align perfectly with my desired lesson plan. The information is useful for a fellow teacher since it includes thorough information pertaining to food and carbon footprints. The videos are also useful since they compare two types of tomatoes: industrial and local.

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Food and Carbon - Nature Works Everywhere

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The carbon "foodprint" of vegetables and fruits is complex, involving how the food is produced, how it reaches us, and what we do with it. In this lesson, students will consider different ways food is produced, transported and consumed and will evaluate how food they grow locally may have a smaller carbon footprint than food found in the grocery store.

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This is a useful resource for teachers since it gives students the opportunity to discover their individual footprint. It is also useful since it explains what the key contributors are to individuals’ footprint and different ways they can lower their footprint.

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Food miles is a resource teacher can utilize to track the distance food travels from different countries. The resource also calculates the approximate carbon created by different forms of transportation. It also includes suggestions of what individuals can do to reduce the miles food travels.