Economics and Geography Lessons

Get Growing

MCPS Status of Book as of 4/4/96:
Not Evaluated

Title: Get Growing by Candace Savage with illustrations by Gary Clement (Firefly Books Buffalo, NY, 1991)

Lesson Developed by Barbara S. Yingling

Literature Annotation: This non-fiction books deals with keeping the earth's people supplied with food. It includes methods to conserve nutrients in the soil and other wise farming techniques. Deforestation and dust bowl problems are discussed.

Grade Level: 3-5

Duration: 60 minutes

Economic Concepts: Production, Consumption, Specialization

Geography Themes: Place, Relationships: Humans and Environments

MSPAP Outcomes and Indicators:

Economic Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the historical development and current status of economic principles, institutions, and processes needed to be effective citizens, consumers, and workers in American society.

Indicator:

• Identify economic resources located within a community.
• Make decisions about available goods and services and understand the consequences of those decisions.

Geography Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of geographic concepts and processes as needed to examine the role of culture, technology, and the environment in the location and distribution of human activities.

Indicators:

• Explain the relationship between the physical setting of a community and its ability to satisfy the wants and needs of the people.
• Examine environmental concerns in the community.
• Examine personal environmental choices and their effects on the quality of life in the community.

Objectives: Students will be able to:

• Describe how people use the resources in the environment to meet their need for food.
• Discuss how specialization of farming may lead to soils depleted of nutrients.
• Express the cause-effect relationship between poor farming techniques and soil erosion.
• Discuss environmental issues related to chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Vocabulary: compose, decomposers, desertification, erosion, fertilizer, monoculture, topsoil, humus, agriculture

Materials:

• Book: Get Growing
• For motivational activity: items that can be traced back to their source (for example: an apple, a carrot, baseball bat, gold jewelry, woolen scarf, a wooden block)
• 1 package of chocolate cupcakes
• sieve or colander, 3 or 4 to be shared by the students
• jar, 1 for every 3 students
• magnifying glass, 1 for every 3 students
• 4_" x 11" card with the word "specialization" in bold print (half of an 8_" x 11" piece of card stock)
• "Hungry for Humus" worksheet, 1 for each student
• On-Line Resources
  • Day of the Black Blizzard (Discovery Channel)
  • The Dust Bowl
  • Drylands Exhibit
  • The Importance of Forests and the Perils of Deforestation

Teacher Background: Food is needed for survival. But where does our food come from, and how do we get it? The quality of our food is related to the health of the soil in which it grows. Many farms today are large, specialized corporate farms which are formidable competitors for small farmers who may over-farm their land to produce enough to survive. This may lead to cultivating areas that could have helped the soil to hold water, leading to dry topsoil that erodes or blows away.

Lesson Development:

Review/Motivation:

1. Tell the students that they are going to play a quiz game. When you hold up an object, they are to tell you the place from which the object originally came. Hold up a fruit, like an apple. If the students say "tree" or "seed", ring a bell for a winner. If they say "store", make a buzzer sound for wrong answer. Do this with 2 or 3 other objects like a carrot (seed or ground), a wooden block (tree trunk), a woolen scarf (sheep). For the last round, hold up a package of chocolate cupcakes. Accept the answer only if the students' reply indicates that the ingredients come from farm products. Show the students pages 10 and 11 in Get Growing and read the text to them.

2. Write "cow", "wheat", "cocoa beans", "sugar" and "hen" across the chalkboard. Ask the students where each of these gets their nutrients to live. Create a food chain chart by writing their responses under the heading words. Example:

   Cow	Wheat	Cocoa Beans	Sugar	Hen
   |	|	|	|	|
   hay and grass	soil	soil	soil	corn
   |				|
   soil				soil

   Point out that the soil is the base of each of the food chains. Ask: "How does the soil get nutrients to feed all of these food chains?" Tell the students that they will be reading and doing activities that will help answer that question.

Activities:

1. Take your students on a "soil safari" as explained on page 19 of Get Growing: Find a patch of rich soil on your school grounds to use as the location of the safari. (If none is available, try putting several bags of rich topsoil with humus in a spot on the grounds where it won't be disturbed for several days before the safari.)

2. Have the students work in groups of 3. Distribute to each group a magnifying glass for observing the soil, a jar for collecting small soil "critters", and a piece of paper and pencil for drawing pictures or writing descriptions of findings. Have the colanders available for straining the soil for animals. Take the groups of students to the safari location. Have them sit and observe the dirt without disturbing it for a while. If they spot any creature activity, have them record their observations on the paper for their group. Have each group gather a clump of dirt and break it gently to look for creatures. They may put the creatures into the jar and use the magnifying glass to get a more detailed look. Direct them to make drawings and record observations on the paper. Some students may want to use the colanders to sieve the soil. Before returning to the classroom, return all creatures and soil to nature. Ask students if they could tell where the creatures were going, what they might eat and how they might be helping the plants to grow.

3. Read pages 18-21 in Get Growing with the students. Have the students write a paragraph called "A Day in the Life of a (creature's name) ," in which they describe what they think a typical day would be like for the creature.

4. Read part of the section of Get Growing called "Treating the Soil Like Dirt", pages 23-24. (Do not read the section titled "Turning Fuel Into Food" yet.) Have the students fold lined paper in half; label one half "Good Points About Chemical Fertilizers", the other half "Bad Point About Chemical Fertilizers". Ask the students how chemical fertilizers can help feed the billions of people on the globe. (If farmers feed the soil creatures with compost or manure and then add a little fertilizer, more food is produced than the soil can normally grow. This food will help feed more people.) Have the students add "helps feed more people" on the "good points" side.

5. Read the section titled "Turning Fuel Into Food" with the students. Hold a discussion to see if using up natural gas for nitrogen fertilizer is a good point or a bad point about chemical fertilizers. Remind the students that natural gas in a non-renewable resource; it can be used up. Take a vote to decide which part of the chart should hold this information.

6. Direct the students to work in pairs to read page 25 and look for 3 ways that nitrogen fertilizer is harmful to the earth. Have them add the ways to the bad points side of their charts. (Nitrogen fertilizer can make soil too acidic; ; it may pollute our drinking water; it may damage the ozone layer of the atmosphere.) Ask why students think some farmers are returning to organic farming techniques, which do not use chemical fertilizers. Ask how the students, as citizens, could support organic farmers if they believe in their methods.

7. Ask if any of the students know the song, "Old McDonald Had a Farm". If a few students are willing, have them sing a few verses the traditional way with pigs oinking, cows mooing, sheep baaing and so on. Hold up the card with the word specialization in bold letters. Tell the students that in recent times many farmers have changed the way they operate their farms by specializing. Invite 3 students to the front of the class to be the new kind of farmers. Introduce them to the class by calling each one Farmer (student's name). Ask them to listen while you sing a few new verses of the song. Tell the students to be ready to explain what specializing means. Sing the song, but instead of the regular verses sing:

   Old Farmer (first student's name) had a farm.

   E-I-E-I-O

   And on his farm he grew some wheat,

   E-I-E-I-O

   And on his farm he grew some wheat,

   E-I-E-I-O

   And on his farm he grew some wheat,

   E-I-E-I-O

   Old Farmer (second student's name) had a farm.

   E-I-E-I-O

   And on his farm he grew some corn,

   E-I-E-I-O

   And on his farm he grew some corn,

   E-I-E-I-O

   And on his farm he grew some corn,

   E-I-E-I-O

   Old Farmer (third student's name) had a farm.

   E-I-E-I-O

   And on his farm he grew some oats,

   E-I-E-I-O

   And on his farm he grew some oats,

   E-I-E-I-O

   And on his farm he grew some oats,

   E-I-E-I-O

   Ask the students to explain what it means for a farmer to specialize in his planting. (Specializing means the farmer plants one kind of crop.) Have the students read pages 26-28 to find out more about the effects of specialization.

8. Do the following demonstration for the students: Place some soil in 2 shallow box lids. Fill the dirt in one box with growing mosses, plants, or moist humus like wet leaves; leave the dirt in the other lid very dry and exposed. Ask the students to predict what will happen to the soil if a strong wind blows on it. Use a hair dryer or blow through a straw to simulate wind. (Be prepared for the soil without moisture or any ground cover to blow away.) Ask students what the difference was in the way the "wind" affected the soil in the 2 boxes. (The soil that was all dried out blew away.) Ask what the demonstration should teach a farmer about soil. (Soil needs to be keep moist; soil covered with humus or ground plants that are rooted won't blow away as easily.)

9. Have the students read page 29-30 to identify ways that losing the humus in the soil causes problems. Distribute the "Hungry for Humus" worksheet. Have students cut out the effects that match each cause part of a sentence. (Sample answers: The soil becomes too dry so plants wither quickly. The soil turns to dust so the top layer is swept away by wind, rain, or snow melt. The soil loses its fertility so more fertilizer is needed. The farmers need to make more money to pay for all of their equipment, so they plant every available clod of soil. More land is needed for planting, so marshes and ponds are drained. More land is needed for planting, so stands of trees are cut down. More and more topsoil is drying up and blowing away, so many parts of the earth are being turned into desert.)

10. Use the world map and text on page 31 to explain and discuss the effects of clearing woodlands.

11. Have the students fold a plain sheet paper into 4 sections. Direct them to use the information on pages 34 and 35 to identify and illustrate four steps for keeping soil healthy. Each illustration should include a caption. ("Feed the soil creatures" "Keep the soil covered to prevent erosion" "Dig and disturb the soil as little as possible" "Plant a variety of crops") Share some of their drawings and have students explain the importance of each step.

Conclusion/Closure:

1. Have a class discussion about the consequences for people if the soil is not kept healthy. Create a graphic organizer such as a web to illustrate their conclusions.

2. Have students brainstorm ways that individuals could have an impact on some of the issues studied in this reading. Put these key words on the board to aid their discussion, if needed:
   planting methods
   personal garden
   choice of foods
   voting

Thoughtful Application:

1. Help the students to plan and plant a small garden on the school grounds. The students should help make decisions about the kinds of plants to be grown and whether to use natural or chemical fertilizers. Have the students take turns tending to the garden.

2. Alternate activities include a visit to a working farm to evaluate the farming methods used on the farm or an evaluation of the planting conditions on the grounds around the school property to see if the methods used will hamper erosion.

Extension: Have students read the novel, Blue Willow, a fictional account of the Dust Bowl in the American Midwest. Have the students identify any causes of the Dust Bowl that were mentioned in the story and do research to support or disprove the causes mentioned.

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Last updated on April 1, 1997
Maintained by John L. Day

<jday@umd5.umd.edu>