A STANDARDS-BASED-UNIT FOR GRADES 4-6
Standards:
6.9 Students examine the interrelationships among physical earth processes, ecosystems, and human activities.
7.13 Students … recognize the interdependence of all systems that support life.
7.15ee. Students understand ecological interactions and interdependence between humans and their resource demands on environmental systems.
Desired Outcomes:
Students learn:
This Standards-Based-Unit was prepared using Making Connections, Linking Population and the Environment Elementary Teacher’s Guide available for $15 from the Population Reference Bureau, Inc., 1875 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 520, Washington, DC 20009-5728. Most lessons are about 45 minutes long. The entire unit will take 3-4 weeks.
Unit scope:
This unit can be done as an integrated unit where the activities and the projects are the classes’ language arts, social studies, and environmental science work. Teachers could also add related math problems encompassing data interpretation, understanding doubling and large numbers, and calculating habitat loss, water use, energy use, etc. Zero Population Growth (ZPG) has an excellent math activities kit, Multiplying People, Dividing Resources for grades 5-10. ZPG’s address is given on page 4 under publications.
Assessment:
Teachers can choose to have student work (see projects listed after Lessons section) be from the Arts, Language, and Literature Standards. There are assessment activities built into the unit in lessons five and eleven.
Lesson One: “Lessons from The Lorax” PRB Lesson 15, p. 64; two days
Addresses Standards 6.7e, land use problems and 6.9b how human activities modify the environment.
Using Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax students learn that economic demands can lead to excessive use of natural resources.
Lesson Two: “The Need for Trees” PRB Lesson 16, pp. 65-74; two - three days
Addresses Standard 6.5: Students investigate … social histories of people, place, cultures. Students learn about deforestation in Kenya, Nepal, and Brazil.
Lesson Three: “People and Water” PRB Lessons 11,12,13, pp. 39-59 six days
Addresses Standard 6.5 Students learn about human use of water - its availability, conservation efforts, uneven distribution and usage; case studies in Egypt and Bangladesh.
Lesson Four - Summary of Lessons - after 11 days: two days Addresses Standards 7.13, 7.15ee and writing standards 1.5-1.10
Class discussion to ascertain that students understand that resources can be renewable or non-renewable; that they can be conserved or squandered; that there are disparities of usage and distribution; that human use and impact can extend beyond one’s immediate geographic area.
Assignment, which could be ongoing throughout these lessons: Write a story or a poem that tells about using water, trees or other resources wisely. The writing must show an understanding of the issues. See the list of read alouds which demonstrate environmental writing.
Lesson Five: Show The Popular Little Planet video (20 minutes), one - two days
Addresses Standards 6.9 b, 7.15
This video stars two 11 years olds who provide an overview of the issues of population growth, consumption, migration, immigration. The video illustrates the scope of large numbers and exponential growth. PRB lesson 2, pp 4-5 on population size can be used as a supplement to the video.
Lesson Six: Reading and Understanding World Population Data, PRB Lesson 5, pp.11-18; two-three days
Addresses Standards 6.2 Using Data; 6.5 Social Histories, 1.5-10 Writing Opportunities
This lesson gives an overview of the disparities of food, money, and family size through an examination of demographic data and a story of a profile of an “average” child.
Lesson Seven: The Stork and the Grim Reaper, PRB Lesson 4.5, p. 10, one day
Addresses Standard 6.9b
This lesson demonstrates carrying capacity showing that the current birth rate in the world is 3 times the death rate.
Closure: In order to summarize the unit, teachers would need to review the concepts of carrying capacity, and the need to balance our use of natural resources and our population growth with our planet’s ability to sustain our way(s) of life. Students could be asked to write about what their preferred future looks like and how current levels of resource consumption and population growth affect their lives. They could discuss steps they can take to effect change. The students’ oral or written reports (given below), with teacher led discussion, would also serve to bring closure to the unit, with students understanding the range and effects of resource use, life styles and population growth.
Students choose a country and a genre (a report, letters to a pen pal, a series of newspaper articles). In their chosen genre students should discuss the carrying capacity of their country, and present an overview of the relationships among population growth rates, quality of life and environmental stewardship. Students should discuss the resource demands placed on their country’s environmental systems, and the impact these demands are having on their country’s natural systems, on other animal species and on human well- being. Student projects should contain most of the following topics and should discuss connections among these topics:
Students will draw a poster or create a diorama representing the lifestyle/environment of one segment of his/her country to depict the above listed topics. (Standards 1.16, 5.29, 5.30 Visual Arts) Students should provide a caption with credits and a brief explanation of the art work. The Material World books are great resources. These “coffee table” books depict the material possessions of families from around the world. Each family and all of the family’s possessions are photographed in front of their home. Accompanying each photograph is a brief discussion of the lives of the family members. There are tables in the back of the books that give much of the writing project topic information.
Students give brief oral reports about their countries (Standard 1.15). A class discussion of the similarities and differences in their countries would bring the unit to a close.
1) Write a letter to a Congressional representative about a particular environmental issue.
2) Study local growth. Examine the balance of consideration of jobs, social needs, and the environment. Interview a local planner about regional growth planning. Find out whether there are any local sustainable community initiatives balancing consideration of social, environmental, and economic issues. Are there indicators that your students could monitor?
3) Continue with PRB’s curriculum and study: People and Land Use, Lessons 17-20; People and Movement, Lessons 21-25; and global resource use, Lessons 26-28. Zero Population Growth’s elementary curriculum has good units on human waste production and habitat preservation.
4) Learn more about reduce, reuse, recycle activities from your local Solid Waste District or from the The Association of Vermont Recyclers (802-229-1833) in Montpelier.
5) With the help of the health teacher (and the blessing of the administration) discuss family planning so that your students understand that people can choose the number of children they bear, and that children and mothers are healthier when mothers wait until they are out of their teens to bear children. Students can also learn that by spacing births, each child receives more attention and has adequate mother’s milk (especially in the developing world where there is often malnutrition).
*available on loan from VPA
Read Aloud Suggestions:
Cherry, Lynn, A River Ran Wild and Great Kapok Tree (both are picture books)
George, Jean, The Secret Gator of Gumbo Limbo and Who Really Killed Cock Robin?
Hamilton, Virginia, Jaguarundi (picture book)
Peet, Bill, Farewell to Shady Glade (picture book)
Yolan, Jane, Letting Swift River Go (picture book)
(The picture books, while for younger readers, are excellent and are given as models for the students to use for their writing projects.)
Books:
The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
How Much Is a Million by David Schwartz
Material World: A Global Family Portrait by Peter Menzel
Our Endangered Planet: Population Growth by Suzanne Winckler and Mary Rodgers
Women in the Material World by Faith d’Alusio and Peter Menzel
Videos: (see Population Resource Guide for more information)
World Population (6 minutes) ZPG*
A Popular Little Planet (20 minutes), Sunburst Communications*
Publications:
Counting on People; Elementary Population and Environmental Activities* published by Zero Population Growth (ZPG), 1400 Sixteenth St., NW, Suite 320, Washington, DC 20036, 1-800-POP-1956, available for $19.95
Population and Sustainable Living Resource Guide* published by Vermont Population Alliance
Why Population Matters* published by Population Action International
This Standards-Based-Unit was written by Barbara Duncan, Executive Director of Vermont Population Alliance (VPA) and member of ZPG’s Population Education Network (PETNet). Ms. Duncan is a Population Mentor for the Sierra Club and is active with the National Audubon Society’s Population and Habitat Program. For more information you can reach VPA at P.O. Box 466, Norwich, VT 05055, 802-649-5168, <bdpop@valley.net>. VPA is available for school programs and teachers’ workshops.
VPA has produced a similar Standards Based Unit using Zero Population Growth’s (ZPG) elementary curriculum, Counting on People. VPA has also produced a elementary Standards Based Unit, “How Big is Your Ecological Footprint” using both the ZPG and PRB curricula. VPA has middle school and high school Standards Based Units to accompany PRB’s and ZPG’s middle school and high school curricula.