This video-based lesson encourages students to consider how their food choices affect the environment, as well as how their decisions fit into the food production process.
The video examines each step of the food production process in detail, and students will learn about deforestation, fertilizer concerns, gas emissions, animal waste runoff, water scarcity, transportation issues, and excessive landfill waste.
Solutions are provided on an individual basis, providing students with ways they can contribute to solutions at the local level.
Teaching Tips
Positives
As students are viewing the video, there are formative assessments embedded in the form of multiple-choice and open-ended questions.
There are clickable icons that provide PDFs of guided notes, discussion topics, a quiz, lesson plans, and more, or one click will download the entire educational package.
A brief introductory video is embedded without the need to submit a questionnaire.
Additional Prerequisites
Video language choices include English, Spanish, or German.
The resource provides academic standards arranged by state and divided by middle and high school levels.
Teachers must click through a questionnaire to receive access to the video.
Animal slaughter is mentioned, so teachers may wish to use caution when showing the video to younger or sensitive students.
Animal waste runoff is shown, which might upset younger or sensitive students.
Students should know what climate change is and how greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change.
The answer keys for the quiz and homework are not accessible with the password provided.
Differentiation
Students in Math classes can pause the video at several places showing graphs and then create word problems based on the data displayed.
Students are encouraged to use a QR code at the end of the video to share their thoughts via a survey, so English classes could extend that activity to write a personal narrative about food choices.
This video is an excellent starting place for science teachers to assign research projects to small groups, emphasizing the food production process and how to modify each step to reduce negative environmental impacts.
Scientist Notes
This 19-minute video highlights how greenhouse gas emissions from food production and their supply chains increase global warming. It also underscores solutions to food waste and ways to reduce your carbon footprint from food choices. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
MS-ESS3-4 Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
HS-ESS3-6 Use a computational representation to illustrate the relationships among Earth systems and how those relationships are being modified due to human activity.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
HS-LS2-7 Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
LS4: Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
HS-LS4-6 Create or revise a simulation to test a solution to mitigate adverse impacts of human activity on biodiversity.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.7.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 7 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.8.2 Analyze the purpose of information presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and evaluate the motives (e.g., social, commercial, political) behind its presentation.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.3 Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.4 Present information, findings, and supporting evidence clearly, concisely, and logically such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and task.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.5 Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.6-8.1 Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.6-8.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
