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As a Consumer, Are You A Part of The Problem?

Lesson Overview

The purpose of this lesson is to introduce a curriculum intended to teach students about sustainability and further focus on the impact of consumer choices. Students will draw on open discussion, videos, articles, and physical products to  grasp an understanding of their impact on other people, animals, and the planet as a consumer. As the lesson comes to an end, students will demonstrate their understanding by writing down 3 things they found out, two things they found interesting, and one question they still have. If time permits, the teacher can hold a class debate.

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to:

  1. Explain the impacts that consumer choices has on other people, animals, and the planet.

  2. Research and analyze the true price of products.

  3. Examine the relationship between consumer choices, sustainability, and human rights.

  4. Explain the harm everyday products have on other people, animals, and the planet.

  5. Distinguish between positive and negative consumer choices.

Conceptual Understandings

Students will understand that:

  1. Consumer choices can have positive and negative effects on people, animals, and the planet.

  2. The materials economy connects all living beings and the environment.

  3. Marketing techniques, peer influences, price, and availability influence consumer choices.

Standards

Social Studies:

(3.C&G.2)  Understand how citizens participate in their communities.  

(3.C&G.2.1) Exemplify how citizens contribute politically, socially, and economically to their community.

(3.C&G.2.2) Exemplify how citizens contribute to the well-being of the community’s natural environment.

(4.E.2) Understand the economic factors when making personal choices.

(4.E.2.2) Explain how scarcity of personal finance resources affects the choices people make based on their wants and needs.

(5.G.1) Understand how human activity has and continues to shape the United States.

(5.E.2) Understand that personal choices result in benefits or consequences.

Science:

(4.L.1) Understand the effects of environmental changes, adaptations and behaviors that enable animals (including humans) to survive in changing habitats.

Guiding Questions

1. What is a consumer?

2. What are consumer choices?

3. What influences consumer choices?

4. What makes a consumer choice sustainable? non-sustainable?

5. How do individual consumer choices affect other people, animals, and the planet?

Assessment

Summative Assessment: The students will be broken off into two groups and the teacher will supervise a class debate. 

  1. Is a local food system more beneficial than a global food system?

  2. What impact does the global food system have on our environment?

  3. What impact does the global food system have on our health, on our personal well being?

  4. How can we take action and move towards a more sustainable food system? 

The teacher will prompt the students to write a reflection paper following the class debate. Within the reflection, the students should discuss how they believe the debate went and what they learned from the lesson as well as what new information they learned during the debate.

 

Formative Assessment: Students are prompted to do research during the lesson and then present information to the class as the lesson comes to an end. To complete the lesson, students will hand in an exit ticket. The exit ticket will be in the form of 3-2-1: 3 things you found out, two things you found interesting, and one question you still have.

Differentiation and Accommodation 

1. Students with a higher reading level could be apart of the group above theirs when the class breaks off into groups.

2. Students can rotate each station to explore different products.

3. Students can work individually instead of as a group.

4. Students can listen to audio recordings instead of reading text.

5. Allow students to leave the classroom if need be.

6. Allow students to take brain breaks if need be.

Vocabulary

1. Consumer: one that utilizes economic goods.

2. Choices: care in selecting; the act of choosing; the power of choosing. 

3. Influences: the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways.

4. Consequences: something produced by a cause or necessarily following from a set of conditions; a conclusion derived through logic.

5. Community: the people with common interests living in a particular area; a unified body of individuals.

6. Behaviors: the manner of conducting oneself.

7. Natural: existing in or produced by nature: not artificial.

8. True price: the real cost. 

9. Materials economy: a production system that dominates our manufacturing world.

10. Relationships: the state of being related or interrelated.

11. Contribution: the part played by a person or thing in bringing about a result or helping something to advance; the act of contributing.

Introduction

1. The teacher will begin the lesson by sharing an anecdote with the students. The teacher will share a story about days spent at the beach at a young age. The teacher will state that he or she remembers constantly digging holes in the sand and burying garbage in the hole created. The teacher will state that he or she did not realize it back then; but, they were once a part of the problem. The teacher will tell the students that they know they have been apart of the problem. The teacher will ask the students if they believe they are apart of the problem? Teachers have the ability to alter their anecdote how they see fit and relevant. 

2.The teacher will then state: “Today we are going to analyze our consumer choices and how they relate to human rights and sustainability.”

3. The teacher will introduce and define concepts that will be heard and seen throughout the lesson: consumer, choices, true price, relationships, and contribution.

Instruction & Guided Practice

1. The teacher will begin with a whole group true price activity allowing students to analyze the true price of the use of everyday products. As a whole the class will discuss the true price of a plastic water bottle. The teacher will describe to the students what true price means. The class will create a T Chart with one side having the negatives of plastic water bottles and the other side having the positives of a plastic water bottle.

2. The students will watch a short video about plastic water bottles and the teacher will prompt the students to identify new information presented in the video that is not already listed on their T chart as they watch the video.

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3. Following the video, the teacher will ask the students if they have anything to add to the T Chart.

4. The students will be instructed that they are now going to be split into three groups. The teacher should split the students into three groups based on their reading levels or as they see fit. The teacher will inform the students that they are now becoming the experts of their product and sustainability. The teacher will inform the students that the class will come together as a whole and each group will explain the research they found to the whole class. The students must understand that they must present the class with three facts found. The three facts found should be written on a sheet of paper and handed into the teacher upon completion of the lesson. Each group will have a product in front of them that causes great harm to the environment thus allowing the students to touch and feel the product. The students will gather research on sustainability as well as information on the product in front of them. The three products will be bananas, sugar, and rice.

5. The teacher must explain to the students that they must complete the Observe (I see), Reflect (I think), and Question (I wonder) worksheet regarding the product in front of them before they do anything else. The teacher will then explain that he or she has created a web page with resources for the children. The teacher must explain to the children that they need to type in the URL of the web page assigned to their group in the toolbar. The teacher must also inform the students that they will be prompted to use a google sign in to access one of the articles on their web page. The teacher will inform the students that if they need help, he or she is there to help them. 

6. Before the students break off into the three groups, the teacher will ask them to think about this question as they do their work: How do consumer choices affect people, other animals, and the planet?

8. Before the students break off into the three groups, the teacher will do a brief Brain Break

7. The three URL's that the students will be given relating to their appropriate reading level will be:

Padlet (6th Grade Resources)

8. The groups should spend 35 to 40 minutes doing research.

9. The students and the teacher will get back together and the three groups will have time to present their research to the class.

10. The teacher will then show the students a Ted Talk. The teacher should explain to the students that they will be watching a video in which an eleven year old boy discusses the wrongdoings of the global food system and promotes a local food system.

11. The students will be asked questions to think about as they watch the video. The questions asked: As consumers, are we making smart choices? How do our choices lead to various consequences? How do you think better consumer choices can be made?

Closure & Summary

1. Inform students that four different products were analyzed during the lesson. Review the four products: Water, Bananas, Sugar, and Rice.

2. Ask the students: What are some big ideas about consumerism that were learned?

3. Inform students that it is important to remember that the choices we make not only have an impact on ourselves; but, it they have an impact on people around them, animals, and the environment.

4. The teacher should inform the students that as the lesson comes to an end, they must fill out an exit ticket. The exit ticket will ask the students to write down 3 things they found out, 2 things they found interesting, and 1 question they still have.  

Resources & Materials

1. Laptops

2. Dry erase board and expo markers

3. A monitor screen to present the videos to the whole class

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6xlNyWPpB8

5. https://padlet.com/ads6145/4thyearstudents

6. https://padlet.com/ads6145/5thyearstudents

7. https://padlet.com/ads6145/6thyearstudents

8.https://www.ted.com/talks/birke_baehr_what_s_wrong_with_our_food_system

9.https://humaneeducation.org/blog/2008/theres-just-something-about-the-bottled-water/

10. Exit slip

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