Download 11th grade History

11th grade History
Michelle Adams- Lawrence High School, Long Beach, CA
 Standards: 11.2.2 and 11.5.7 (also tied in a Language arts
standard, by incorporating literature, such as "The Jungle," and
"Fast Food Generation")
 Integration: Used the Footprint to connect standards with
changes in industry and mass production.
 Activity: Students took the ecological footprint quiz, drew their
own footprints, and compared and contrasted their results. Then,
students took the quiz again using the same answers but with a
different location to see how location changes the outcome.
After students took quiz, I facilitated discussion on how EF would
affect industry and mass production using the timeframe of
1800’s to today.
 Integration Barriers: Lack of understanding or concern from
the students and other teachers. They didn't want to listen about
any other standard to add on to their already over burdened
teaching lessons.
 Student/Teacher Responses:
1. My perspective about how the environment is involved with
many facets of history. For instance, the hunter gatherer
standard can now include sustainability. The questions
regarding how that was accomplished, and how did it change,
and how is it different now, can be addressed at every grade
level.”
2. “One students took the quiz, and couldn't wait to have his
whole family take it as well. A learning tool that expanded out
of the classroom. To me, that is a successful lesson.”
Jeff Evans- Mission San Jose High School, Fremont, CA
 Standards: 11.6
 Integration: In my U.S. History class we have been going over
how the Great Depression drastically changed people's lives and
how people had to reevaluate their use of the resources around
them. For example, by overusing, overgrazing and clear-cutting
the land, farmers in the Midwest suffered from the Dust Bowl
and saw their crops fail. Industrialization and over consumption
saturated the marketplace and drained resources in the spendhappy 1920s. Once the Great Depression hit, America had to
think about the opportunity costs of production vs. conservation.
I used the example of a grocery store bought potato vs a
farmers' market potato. The grocery store potato creates more
jobs, by involving more middlemen from the farm to the produce
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isle, which was good for the economy then. However, the cost of
resources to make that transfer has caused a burden to both the
small farmer and our ecosystem.
Activity:
1. Take the Ecological Footprint quiz at "www.myfootprint.org"
for homework so they could see how big theirs is.
2. The next day explain how the footprint works with the
resources from the workshop, such as the sustainable
average versus the American average. I allowed them to
compare their footprints with other students and ask what
those students were doing differently to increase or decrease
their footprint.
3. I then integrated the footprint into the lesson plan by
reflecting back to the depression to show how the Midwest
footprint created a Dust Bowl.
Integration Barriers: “I found it harder then I thought to
incorporate the Great Depression with the current ecological
impacts so I turned my attention to really focusing them on the
footprint concepts. Through seeing what is happening with our
depleting resources today, I think students were able to make
their own connections with the Dust Bowl debacle. My lesson
plans shows that adaptation of focus. As far as changing the way
students think about the resources available, I believe this
project opened their eyes to our overproduction problems.
Student/Teacher Responses:
1. “The Footprints program could have been better used at the
beginning of the year when talking about successful
civilizations as well as earlier in the semester when we talked
about industrialization of the early 20th century. That being
said, I found that the teachings of the Ecological Footprint
and our sustainability may not have to integrate so neatly
into a standard because students can get into it when they
see it is about their own personal choices.”
2. “The day after the students took the quiz, they were coming
to me before school even began and telling me their footprint
and as they came into class all the students were comparing
sizes before I even prompted them to do so. They then got
very frustrated but had fun trying to create a chain from a
common farm product to the grocery shelf. The students had
fun with it by using their own (mis)conceptions of resources
and exploring current dilemmas.”
3. “I also know that many students got their parents involved by
having them take the test and see if their answers came out
differently, and then asking what can we change.”