Food: Just Grow It!
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Food: Just Grow It! Developed with funding support from the Healthy Hawai`i Initiative State of Hawai`i Department of Health __________________________________________________ PROJECT LEADERS: University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources Cooperative Extension Hawaii State Department of Education Food: Just Grow It! … a supplementary compendium of teaching-learning activities designed to enhance secondary students’ thinking and reasoning skills … __________________________________________________ University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources Cooperative Extension Hawaii State Department of Education February 2004 FFoooodd:: JJuusstt GGrrooww IItt!! TABLE OF CONTENTS OVERVIEW: 1-6 ACTIVITIES: “Rot for Your Plot” Introduction to Theme Units 7 Creating Soil (Weathering Effects) 9 Hot Spots (Warming and Cooling) 16 Porous or Poor-Us (Soil Characteristics) 25 Taste of Dirt? (pH) 36 Dirt Rich (Soil in the Food Cycle) 45 Under-Cover Critters & Creatures (Composting) 54 Compost Cook-Off (Making Compost) 63 “Why Organic Growing?” Introduction to Theme Units 71 Malama i ka `Aina (Hawaiian Culture) 73 Victory Gardens (WW II Oral History) 83 What Goes Down Stays Around (Water Cycle) 92 OG-What? (Organic Farming Certification) 105 People’s Perceptions (Organic Farming Survey) 114 The Great Debate (Organic vs. High-Intensity) 125 WOG It! (Growing Organically) 133 “Know Your Pests” Introduction to Theme Units 141 Pest-iness (Informal Classification) 143 Least “Wanted” (Local Pest / Disease Problem) 150 Most “Wanted” (Beneficial Organisms) 161 “…cides” (Chemical Killers) 177 “Low-Tech” Control (Organic / Mechanical Controls) 186 Transport / Import (Organism Introduction to Hawaii) 195 Food: Just Grow It! TABLE OF CONTENTS The Battle (Regulations) 205 “Five a Day” Introduction to Theme Units 217 We Are What We Eat ! (Food Guide Pyramid) 219 Fight Fat! (Low Fat Diet) 234 Cultural Fives (Diets of Different Cultures) 243 Scavenger Hunt for Greens (Weed or Food?) 253 Decision, Decisions (Consumer Issues) 261 The Great Snack-Off (Creating Healthy Snacks) 275 Book It! (Publishing a Cookbook) 283 “Keep It Clean” Introduction to Theme Units 293 “A – Z” Safety Sense (Common Sense Rules) 295 Molds (Prevalent Health Hazards) 303 Micro-organisms are Everywhere! (Handwashing) 314 Kitchen Safety (Safe Kitchen Guide) 328 On the Job (Safety at Job Sites) 341 One-Two-Three Fire! (Fire & Electrical Safety) 355 “…cide” Safely? (Chemical Safety) 368 Book It, Too! (Student Safety Handbook) 380 “It’s the Dirt” Introduction to Theme Units 387 Up-Side-Down-Side-Up (Roots & Stems) 389 Scents and Senses (Plant Characteristics) 397 Lobby a Hobby (Horticultural Hobby) 405 I’m a Plant! (Campus Walkabout) 413 Indoor Farmer (Propagation) 421 Paper Paradise (Planning / “Landscaping”) 431 Our Corner of the World (Plant a Garden) 439 “Sense of Caring” Introduction to Theme Units 447 Hands Across Generations (Elderly) 454 Advocacy for Disease Prevention / Cure 458 Giving a Hand (Foodbank, Service Kitchen) 461 Food: Just Grow It! TABLE OF CONTENTS Comforting Hands (Hospital, Nursing Care) 466 Reaching Down (Early Childhood) 469 Walk the Talk (Agricultural, Forestry Efforts) 472 APPENDICES: Appendix I: Health Education Benchmarks 476 Appendix II: Life Skills Standards 479 Appendix III: FJGI Partial Reference 482 Food: Just Grow It! TABLE OF CONTENTS FOOD: “JUST GROW IT” OVERVIEW: FOOD: “JUST GROW IT” is a supplementary compendium of teaching-learning activities that are designed to enhance students’ thinking and reasoning skills. The desired outcome of the compendium is for students to make sound decisions and choices in their adult lives that will lead to healthy individuals, communities, and environments. The contexts of the activities are relevant to the real world concern for sustainable production of food. Teachers from various disciplines are invited to use the activities in an integrated manner with their content and/or to join other teachers in presenting the activities or their extensions as part of team or thematic teaching. GOALS: The overall goal as stated earlier is for students to make sound decisions and choices in their adult lives that lead to healthy individuals, communities, and environments. This goal is directly related to the skills of “communicating, reasoning, and investigating which characterize a health-literate person.” (Health Content Standards, Department of Education, State of Hawaii. August 1999, p.1) In support of the overall goal, the activities were designed to address the four General Learner Outcomes of the Department of Education: • The ability to be responsible for one’s own learning. • The understanding that it is essential for human beings to work together. • The ability to be involved in complex thinking and problem solving. • The ability to recognize and produce quality performance and quality products. CONTENT STANDARDS: The activities address the content standards from Health Education, which are listed below. (See Appendix I for the Benchmarks.) • Students comprehend concepts related to health promotion and disease prevention. Food: Just Grow It! 1 • Students access valid health information and health-promoting products and services. • Students practice health-enhancing behaviors and reduce health risks. • Students analyze the influences of media, culture, technology, and other factors to enhance health. • Students use interpersonal communication skills to enhance health. • Students use goal-setting and decision-making skills to enhance health. • Students advocate for personal, family, and community health. In each activity, relevant content standards from different subject areas are identified, together with the specific benchmarks. Asterisks indicate that the benchmarks were taken from a grade group below the 9 – 12 group. LIFE SKILLS: To attain the goals of this compendium, the activities focus on the content standards listed above, but they also incorporate life skills as identified in the Dimensions of Learning instructional frame-work (Marzano, R. A Different Kind of Classroom: Teaching with Dimensions of Learning. 1992). The selected skills fall into the following categories: (See Appendix B for the Life Skills Standards.) • Complex Thinking • Information Processing • Effective Communication • Cooperation/Collaboration • Habits of Mind rds a Other Standards ent Stand t Health Standards Sustainability Service & Stewardship Science Standards Safety Wellness – Mental Health Career & Life Skills Wellness - Nutrition Hawaii Con Unity and Diversity General Learner Outcomes Interdependence Life Skills Food: Just Grow It! 2 THEMES/FOCI: The instructional activities are grouped around universal themes/concepts, applied to the context of food and sustainability. These themes are: • Interdependence • Unity and Diversity • Wellness - Nutrition • Wellness – Mental Health • Safety • Service and Stewardship • Sustainability The activities provide hands-on, authentic experiences for the students. The experiences are, in most cases, applications within a microcosm or subsystem readily recognized by the students. Teachers are encouraged to have students pursue their interest in the themes more in-depth or in other context where they can extrapolate what they have learned. For example, one of the activities has students identify “— cides” in their immediate environment. More in-depth learning can be facilitated in a biological science or chemistry class. Similarly, interested students may want to conduct research on the worldwide use of “—cides” and the current/future impact on the environment. METHODOLOGY: The instructional activities have been developed based on the assumptions that: • the learner generally goes through three phases in the learning cycle — Exploring, Processing, and Applying; • the teacher conducts on-going assessment of the learner’s knowledge, skills, and interests. Therefore, the teacher will determine if an activity will be appropriate as an exploratory activity, one that introduces students to a full-blown lesson on a discipline-specific set of concepts. For example, the activity that has students “create” soil may be an exploratory activity that leads into students doing more extensive soil analysis. On the other hand, the teacher may determine that an Food: Just Grow It! 3 activity may be an application of a major lesson taught in his/her class. An example in a science class is the activity on identifying “pests or partners”, which may serve as an application of the recently learned scientific classification system, where students are able to understand why certain insects share parts of their scientific names. The activities vary in difficulty or intensity, but they all reflect the project-based learning model that focuses on a central concept or principle, involves students in problem-solving or other meaningful tasks, allows students to work autonomously to construct their own learning, and culminates in realistic, student-generated products. The materials do not constitute a “curriculum;” they are not designed to be used in a set sequence nor do they constitute a “recipe book” for the teacher. In designing the activities, we attempted to: • Make project work central to the instruction, rather than peripheral; • Hold students accountable to themselves and their peers; • Incorporate authentic tasks related to the world outside the classroom, which result in valuable products; • Respond to issues or questions that relate to important topics in today’s community