Lesson Plan #3: Why Organic?

This week we tried to teach the kids about different farming methods, mostly the differences between organic farming and conventional farming. This week was probably our least successful lesson so far. First of all, it was severe weather awareness week, and we coincidentally had tornado drills during both classes. That was exciting! But we also discovered that some of the concepts went over their heads so to speak. Even as I was preparing the lesson, I was finding that it was very difficult to come up with simple activities to explain the many complexities in the organic/conventional debate in only 45 minutes. The food labels activity went ok, but they had a hard time focusing. They were able to pull some things out of the movie clips, but they were probably a little too brief and had a lot of things in them that maybe required some previous knowledge. We also found that, although having a sheet for them to write stuff down on did help them stay focused and process some of the information a little more, writing is still difficult for the third grade level when that is not the sole focus of the activity. Even so, I think we were able to get them to understand that there are positives and negatives to both kinds of farming.


Essential Question/s:
How do conventional and organic farming methods measure up? 

Objectives:
Students will be able to:

• define and explain what makes farming “organic farming” vs. “conventional farming”
• express their opinion and debate with other students which they think is better and back up their opinion
• connect the concept of “organic farming” to our garden

Materials, Tools and Resources:

• food labels for organic and non-organic products
• pictures of organic vs conventional food items
• video clips of interviews with farmersActivities:
• Defining organic and conventional farming (5 min)
• Perspectives stations (2 x 7 minutes each)
• Debate/discussion (6 minutes)
• Drawing (5 minutes)

Hook/intro: (5)

• What did we talk about last week? see if they can define biodiversity
• Remind them of the game last week- what did we do to solve the problem of the bugs killing all the plants (answer: diversify). What else do farmers do a lot to get rid of bugs that are killing their plants? (answer: spray pesticides). These are two ways that farmers use to take care of their crops.
• Today we are going to learn more about two different methods, or ways, that farmers go about taking care of their plants and getting them to grow big and strong. Write the words “organic farming” and “conventional farming” on the board and then list the characteristics of each (organic: no chemicals, biodiversity, compost. conventional: pesticides, heribicides, fertilizer, monoculture). Leave on the board so they can refer back to it.

Procedure:

• Learning perspectives: Split into two stations: producer and consumer (7 minutes)
• Give each student a folded-in-half piece of paper that has a blank space at the top and the bottom half split into “organic” and “conventional” with “positives” and “negatives” under each. For the last minute of each station, have the kids write down some ideas in each of the sections on their sheets of paper telling them that they will need this information in order to back up their ideas in the debate.
• Consumers: Bring in several food labels (they can be real or made up, but best if real, good ones: bread, peanuts). Make sure some are organic and the others are not, but do not tell them which is which. Also hide the price.
• Have students read out loud the ingredients of the food and work in partners to circle/highlight which ones they do not know. Talk about the ones they don’t know- what do they think they are for? Why are there more ingredients in one than the other? guessing game: can they tell which one is organic?  Take home message: 1) non- organic food often has a lot of ingredients that we don’t know, and are usually not as healthy (e.g. peanut butter has sugar and molasses)
• guessing game: can they guess the price of each item? Talk about how some people can’t pay a lot of money for food. Take home message: 2) organic food is often more expensive, but not always!
• Look at the pictures of the bananas. Discuss what the differences are, and speculate why. Can they tell which is organic and which is not? Which one is more expensive? Which one might taste better? Take home message: 3) organic produce often has blemishes, whereas conventional looks perfect.
• take home messages and some others to talk about if there is time: 1) organic food is often more expensive, but not always! 2) Organic can often be bought in bulk and then is probably less expensive 3) non- organic food often has a lot of ingredients that we don’t know, and are usually not as healthy (peanut butter has sugar and molasses) 4) Preservatives often give non-organic food longer shelf time 5) organic produce often has blemishes, whereas conventional looks perfect 6) What might be in the food that isn’t in the ingredients list? (pesticide left overs)
• Producers: play several clips with interviews of farmers (7 minutes)
• 1st clip: Conventional farmer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRwg05M83Gk, but uses as little as possible
• why do farmers use fertilizers and pesticides to begin with? What are their advantages? Why does this farmer still use them? (plants grow faster, better, bigger, better looking, cheaper, hard on a large scale)
• why does he try to use as little chemicals as possible? (worker health and safety are in danger with harsh chemicals)
• 2nd clip: Nourish 8:45-9:40
• Why does the person being interviewed say using chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers is bad for the environment? (grow pests along with crop, runoff of chemicals- dead zone)
• What alternatives could you use instead of chemicals and fertilizers (have them think back to the game last week- biodiversity, the three sisters, then ask if they know what compost is)

• Debate- maybe less of a debate but ask a question and have them state their opinion and say why. (6-10 minutes)
• Talk about what a good debate is (respecting other people’s opinions, backing up your opinions with evidence)
• Ask the students the following questions. Ask students to raise their hands and the moderator will alternate calling on students.
• If your parents gave you money to go to the grocery store, would you buy an organic product or a non-organic product?
• If you were a farmer, would you use fertilizer or compost? What if you were a plant, what would you want the farmer to use?
• If you were a farmer, would you use pesticides or use biodversity to keep pests from ruining your crop?

Assessment:

• the debate- make sure students back up their opinion, ask them to clarify their statements
• drawings

Closing:

• Will we be doing organic or conventional farming in our garden?