Essential Questions
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Enduring Understandings
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Activities/Units
Columbian Exchange: This unit guides students through the time period of 1450-1750, using food as the primary mode of travel. Students follow explorers as they bring various food items across the sea, dramatically and suddenly transforming our ecosystems, cultural identities, and global economic systems. Using food as a lens, students research this time period with such primary source documents as recipes, letters, and articles concerning the transporting of food around the world. Their final project is to create a meal that conveys the powerful impact of the Columbian Exchange (see photos below). This can be used on its own, or as a semester project to be followed up with the Industrial Revolution unit.
(Developed by Island Grown Schools)
(Developed by Island Grown Schools)
IGS Unit - Columbian Exchange | |
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Final Assignment | |
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Industrial Revolution: This unit continues along the path of the Columbian Exchange unit, following food as it transforms drastically from 1750-1910. Students research the development and implementation of technologies that simultaneously provided an abundance of food and an unsustainable agricultural system. Using their own community, local farms, and current food choices as evidence of the impacts of these developments, students will explore such concepts as "progress," "technology," "growth," and "capitalism," as they are manifested within the framework of food.
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"Big Business: Food Production, Processing and Distribution in the North 1850-1900": This online exhibition features lithographs, chromolithographs, trade catalogues, trade cards, and product labels from the American Antiquarian Society’s collection that help shed light on major changes in the way Americans in the North produced and sold their food in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Top 10 Foods in America | |
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Field Trips
Foraging Field Trip: Students will engage in a traditional, island foraging practice of harvesting watercress from the wetlands of the island. After harvesting, they will have an opportunity to taste the watercress, and deliver it to the cafeteria to provide a local treat for the school community.
Click here for island farm field trips
Resources
TED Talks
- Jamie Oliver. 20 minute Ted Talk on our food system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go_QOzc79Uc
- Birke Baehr. 10 year old gives a 5 minute talk about our food system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7Id9caYw-Y
- Mark Bittman. 20 minute talk on what's wrong with what we eat: http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html
- Ellen Gustaffson. 10-minute TED Talk called Obesity and Hunger. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7CtKDNf2RI
- Michael Pollan. 18-minute on "A Plant's Eve View": www.ted.com/talks/michael_pollan_gives_a_plant_s_eye_view.html
Films
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Websites and articles
- "10 American Foods that are Banned in other Countries": http://topinfopost.com/2013/07/10/10-american-foods-that-are-banned-in-other-countries