Day 3: Natural and Artificial
Habitat
Day 4: Food Statistics
Day 5: Habitat Statistics
- Tracking Report (Excel)
- Downloaded map of your city / area
- Wall map of your city / area
(optional)
Optional
- Animal Population
Modeling spreadsheet (Excel)
- Pie
Chart Activity Sheet (Word)
Vocabulary
Agriculture:
The raising and breeding of animals and plants for food
Art
or artifice: Human processes of intentionally reshaping things, making
them artificial to some degree.
Bobwhite
quail: A small chunky bird which mostly walks
Civilization: A human society and culture with cities, farms, and roads as
its most important habitats
Desert:
A place not covered by plants, either partly or completely. This is often,
but not always, caused by dryness.
Edge habitat:
A habitat which lies at the border between different types of vegetation
Energy:
Capacity for doing work.
Food: An organism that gets eaten
Habitat: A place where animals or plants can live
Hunting and gathering:
A lifestyle of getting food from natural sources
Natural:
Formed only slightly by human artifice
Organism: An individual living thing
Photosynthesis: A process through which plants convert sunlight
energy into food (e.g. sugar and starch) energy
Plants and animals: The two best
known kingdoms of organisms, distinguished here by mobility and photosynthesis
Vocabulary
Note: students will likely be unfamiliar
with other vocabulary presented in this lesson.
This is done intentionally, to spur additional conversations and
discussion about these words and their meanings. Encourage your students to ask about words
they may be unfamiliar with.
I. Assessing Prior Knowledge
Begin this lesson by asking
students questions such as where they think their food comes from, and what
people have in common with plants and other animals. Then, after some
discussion, jump right in to this lesson by starting the procedure for Day One
(“I am an Animal”) below.
II. Student Activities
Procedure for Day One: I am an Animal
or, Back in My Day, Plants was Plants and Animals was Animals
1. Contextual Preparation:
You might start with a dramatic announcement: "Students, each of you will
spend this week tracking an animal, and making a report with data and
statistics on where that animal went, and what it ate. That animal is . .
. YOU! And you are a fascinating animal." This point is also
made in the "I am an Animal" slideshow.
2. About the slideshows:
These slideshows are not meant for students to read through on their own.
They are intended to be viewed together, to merely outline and illustrate a discussion
of the day's themes, led by the teacher. You might have a different student read the text on each slide.
The "notes" section of
the Powerpoint file has some suggestions and background information for the
teacher.
3. Discussion: This
slideshow simply lays out the kingdoms of plants and animals, locates the
students in the animal kingdom, and asks them to think about how they are
different from, but also similar to, other animals. This is to set up this
lesson's theme of thinking about ourselves as animals. The slideshow also
deliberately sets up the two simple themes of the week-- moving and eating.
4. Tracking Reports: After
the discussion, hand out the "Food Data" and "Habitat Data"
sheets. Go through the forms and help students record what they ate and
where they went since waking up that day. Start (and end) at midnight, for
easy averaging later. The best way is probably for teachers to
demonstrate, logging their day on an overhead projector. You may want to
have them use pencils. (Note: It may be simplest to hand out all of the
handouts for the week at once, stapled together into a notebook.)
5. "Food Data" sheet:
- The "Day" and
"Time" columns are organizational aids. The "Main
Species" column is where some mental connections are made, and
students may require help from the teacher. Encourage students to
read food labels.
- "J M M V F G" stands for the
food groups in shorthand: junk, milk, meat, vegetables, fruit, and
grain. Students will complete these headers and check boxes column
on Day Four. Let it remain a mystery for now.
- "H G H P" likewise stands
for hunting, gathering, herding, and planting, which you will introduce
and students will fill in on Day Two.
- The key to success here is to not bog
down in too much detail. One line per food is fine, though if a
student wants two lines for a ham omelet, he or she can certainly use two
lines. We are just trying to capture the big picture, with reasonable
accuracy. Too much detail will make the following "statistics" days tedious. An appropriate
example is illustrated below.
|
Day
|
Time
|
Food eaten
|
J
|
M
|
M
|
V
|
F
|
G
|
Main species
|
H
|
G
|
H
|
P
|
|
Mon
|
bfst
|
cereal
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
oats
|
|
|
|
|
|
"
|
"
|
milk
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
cow
|
|
|
|
|
|
"
|
"
|
OJ
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
orange
|
|
|
|
|
|
"
|
lunch
|
hotdish
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
cow
|
|
|
|
|
|
"
|
"
|
"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
potato
|
|
|
|
|
|
"
|
"
|
Coke
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
corn
|
|
|
|
|
6. "Habitat Data" sheet:
- This data sheet
is for counting hours spent at various places throughout the day. Be
sure students fill out the "Hours" column. The
"Activity Class" column is for later, so that you can simplify the
students' activities into broad categories: sleeping, playing, learning,
eating, traveling, shopping, etc.
- Again, do not to record too much
detail. Students should focus on the big chunks of their days, and
not the detailed subdivisions. The smallest time unit
should be 30 minutes. This is an opportunity to develop good rounding skills.
Building-scale places are fine
(home, school, playground, car), but you may want to break out some smaller places where
students spend much time (classroom, bed). Be sure to capture travel
time.
|
Day
|
Place
|
Hours
|
Activity
|
Activity Class
|
|
Mon.
|
home
|
7.0
|
sleeping
|
|
|
"
|
"
|
1.0
|
washing, eating
|
|
|
"
|
car
|
0.5
|
riding to school
|
|
|
"
|
classroom
|
3.0
|
learning
|
|
7. It is probably simplest to set aside
class time each day to update the Tracking Reports, but students may appreciate the opportunity to record and discuss their daily data with
their families as well.
Procedure for Day Two:
Natural and Artificial Foods
or, Where Do You Get All That Energy?
1. Tracking Reports: Help
your students bring their Tracking Reports up to date by recording foods and
habitats for day two.
2. Discussion:
Today's slideshow and Day Three's first slideshow cover the main themes of the week. Today's
slideshow discusses what food is, beyond being just things from the grocery store which
taste good. This is the basic ecological concept of energy flow from the
sun through plants to animals. The slideshow then discusses how people
made food artificial via the Agricultural Revolution, and how that changed more
than just our diet. This slideshow also shows a line graph (with an
option to view more than one), to start students thinking about charts.
3. Your Food's Origins:
Point out to students the "H G HP" on their Food Data sheets.
Can they guess what that stands for? Have them complete the words,
"Hunting - Gathering - Herding - Planting," on their Tracking Reports (on all
pages). Then take an example of a food someone ate, discuss its main species, and
ask whether we got that food from hunting, gathering, herding, or
planting. Have each student who ate that food check the appropriate
"HGHP" box(es) on his or her Tracking Report. Take more
examples, again discussing where each food came from. A few species should make
up the majority of their diets. Have them check one only box for each line.
4. Readings and
video:
Did the students notice how much of their diet came from agriculture (i.e. herding
and planting)? Did any of their food come from hunting and gathering? Do they have any experience with hunting and
gathering? On the other hand, do they have experience with gardening, or with
raising crops on a farm? (Keep in mind that almost all modern
planters have stopped breeding their plants. They buy seeds from corporations
which do the breeding.)
To give students an idea of how humans
lived for most of time, we have one video and two short passages on hunting
and gathering. Both written passages were written by Sioux Indians who were alive in the late
1800s. You may have them read one or both in class, or as homework.
- Luther Standing Bear, My People,
The Sioux (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), pp.
60-66, the end of chapter 5, "My First Buffalo," starting
at "Did you ever stop to think . . ." Copyright prevents
us from reproducing this text here, but this is a wonderful and
informative reading. This book has been reprinted and is easily available
from many libraries, in print or as electronic text from
services such as Net Library.
- Charles Eastman, My Indian Boyhood
(Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia
Library, 1996), pp. 233-240. This public-domain document is
available here as a Word
document.
Standing Bear's text
has a better plot and easier words. Notice that both authors are "apologists" for American Indian
culture, stressing its order and morality, and writing decades after these childhood events. Also notice that Eastman's gathering was just before the
Sioux were forced into an agricultural lifestyle on reservations, while Standing Bear's
hunting was actually after they were on the reservation, but still desiring wild buffalo.
The only danger in these
readings-- designed to familiarize them with hunting and gathering-- is that students may conclude that pre-contact Native Americans did not
practice agriculture. This is completely untrue, disproved by facts that students probably
know-- that Europeans gained many domesticated, agricultural foods (like corn/maize, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, and cocoa) from natives of North and
South America. The point here, however, is that hunting and gathering still provided a large
part of their diet.
Sample questions
on the Eastman passage on gathering:
1. What do you notice
about Eastman's writing style? Was it different from what you usually read? How?
Eastman and Standing
Bear both used very proper and learned language of the
time. This included the writing style of the time, which we often find
stuffy and difficult. This may be a good time to encourage simplicity and
brevity in your students' own writing.
2. Write down the title,
publisher, and date of the dictionary you are using to help you read this.
Then list five words you had to look up in this dictionary. Then for each
word, write a good definition in your own words.
Children often have a notion
of "the" dictionary, as a single, official, and unchanging rulebook
assigning meanings to words. This is a good time to talk about what
dictionaries are best for them, and the value of gaining vocabulary.
3. Describe in your
own words how the rice was harvested by the Native Americans.
4. Have you eaten
any of the foods Eastman described? What similar foods have you eaten?
5. Did you
see any mention of hunting in this story?
Sample questions
on the Standing Bear passage on hunting:
1. Does this story give
you hints that the Sioux used tools that did not just come from hunting and gathering?
The most important
technology here is the horses, which were herded and bred by Europeans, and then herded
and bred by American Indians. Students may have also
noticed industrial products: guns and steel-pointed arrows, the very crux of the
buffalo hunt. The beginning of the story also deals with herded cattle,
and presumably planted rations, starting to replace the hunter-gatherer diet.
2. What are some
signs that buffalo hunting was an organized activity?
3. Why was this
the last buffalo Luther Standing Bear ever killed?
Again, remind
students that this was a people in forced transition from mostly hunting as
away of living, to agriculture and industry.
In addition to the above readings, you may wish to
display a 17-minute movie to your students. It
is a fascinating oral account of a buffalo hunt that occurred in the late 1800s
by the grandfather of Mr. Leonard Little Finger, a member of the Lakota Sioux
tribe. This movie is an excellent way to
complement the above readings, or, if you are not able to locate a copy of the
Standing Bear passage, it will serve well to describe a buffalo hunt. The sample questions listed above (pertaining
to the Standing Bear passage) also apply nicely to the story told by Mr. Little
Finger. Note that throughout the story,
buffalo (bison) are referred in the Lakota language as “Tatanka”. You will need speakers, and Quicktime viewer
software. (Note: you may also wish to play the "Meet Leonard
Little Finger" movie prior to showing the buffalo hunt movie.) View this movie together as a class.
Procedure for
Day Three: Natural and
Artificial Habitats
or, Pigs in Straw Houses Should Not
Throw Bricks
1. Discuss habitat:
The first slideshow for today introduces the concept of habitat, and introduces bobwhite quail
as a comparison species. Bobwhite quail need at least three different habitats to thrive, for three different purposes. Modern
humans also need various habitats. Finally, the slideshow presents plant-clearing as
a key to civilization, for smooth roads, productive agriculture, and stable buildings.
2. Update Tracking
Reports: Update Food and Habitat data. Ask the students if their own
habitats are artificial or natural-- they will all be fairly or heavily
artificial. Unlike the food columns for "H G H P," there are no
columns here for artificial vs. natural, because it is always a gradual
mix. This develops the concept of natural/artificial habitat, and it leads
to the second slideshow activity.
3. Rate
habitats: To engage students in the "Habitat from Space" exercise,
you may want to use a large number line from 1 (natural) to 10 (artificial) on
the board or marked on the floor, or have students hold up signs with scores,
like Olympic judges. Have them justify their ratings by sharing clues from
the images. Make it clear that these ratings are
not definite, right-and-wrong answers, nor "just opinions," but rather
reasonable judgments.
Procedure for Day
Four: Food
Statistics
or, I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing
1. Complete Tracking
Report data: Complete "Food Data" and "Habitat Data"
through the end of "Day Three" (at midnight). Stopping there, so
that you have a whole number of days, will make the daily averages
simpler.
2. Discuss Food Groups: Explain that
for the rest of the time students will be working
through this set of lesson activities, they will be analyzing and presenting the
data they have already collected on their eating and living habits.
Collecting data is only part of the job! The sequence often goes: data,
classification, calculation, charting. One basic process in creating
information out of raw data is classification. The students have done
this already, first classifying foods by main species, then classifying the
species into even broader classes (categories) by source: hunting, gathering,
herding, and planting.
A "food
group" classification is common, medium-detail (between source and Main
Species), and focused on nutrition, a critical issue for American
children. You can find a great deal of information on food groups over
the Internet, searching for keywords like "food group" and
"pyramid". This classification is clearly aimed at raising
children's nutrients while lowering their total calories (yet another byproduct
of the Agricultural Revolution). The first task is simply to have students
fill in the words Junk Milk Meat Veg Fruit and Grain where the
"Food Data" sheets say J M M VF G. Then have students check one box for each food. As in Day Two, you might start
by taking examples until students can continue on their own. This classification
goes by Food, not by Main Species. Discuss the example of a can of soda; the main ingredient may be corn (as sweetener), but the food group is
not vegetables, but junk.
3. Tally
foods:
Tallies are rough bar charts. Demonstrate on the chalkboard how tallies
work. Show them the example on the "Food Tallies" sheet and
emphasize that the slash represents the fifth item counted, not the sixth.
Keeping the tallies neat and rather small works best. Let students start
by counting how many junk food items they ate, then making a tally for that
number, and writing down the number in the space provided. Then move on to
the rest of the food groups, then to production method and species.
4. Make
pie charts: From this point on, the activities are math-intensive.
Before starting, you should consider how well your students can calculate
percentages, and calculate averages such as servings per day. You should
also look at page 9 of the Tracking Report ("Habitat Map"), and
consider whether you want to calculate and chart the animals' average daily
ranges, which involves radii and areas of circles. You could do page 9
with just step 1, or eliminate that page altogether.
You
may also want to have students do the Pie Chart
Activity, as a "warm-up" before charting their food and habitat
data.
To make pie charts
following the Tracking Report's directions,
students must calculate percentages from their Food Group and Production Method
tallies. (This is outlined starting on page 3 of the Tracking Report.) Students
should round these off to the nearest percent. The dotted-line pie charts
are for students to trace over and color in. Demonstrate how a student
would size contiguous pie-slices for, say, 28% and then 13% more. Pie
charts are even more helpful if the percentages are written next to their
pie-slices. You may warn students that because of rounding off they may
not come exactly to 100%-- or you can let them discover this on their own.
This is a fun time for
students to start comparing their diets with each other. Who had the lowest
percentage of junk? Who ate the most fruits and vegetables combined?
