Posters on the walls

We put up a lot of the posters today and started reviewing them. Each student needed to fill out a self-evaluation for their own poster and evaluations for two other posters.

Posters are being Finished

We are close to having our posters finished. A lot of students were putting the finishing touches on them today. Several went up on the walls in the hallway and the rest should be finished by tomorrow.

Posters

We have been putting together the posters today. Some folks are still typing up their descriptions and getting pictures together. One or two people finished their posters and put them on the wall. Hopefully most people will be finished on Monday and have some time to make changes if needed. Final due date is Wednesday, Dec 19th.

Food and Corn Production

We have been wrapping up the research on our "It cost what?" projects over the last several class periods and are just about finished. Now we will concentrate on planning out and creating our posters for presentation.
Today we split into small groups and read different sections of Michael Pollan's book, "Omnivore's Dilemma." We concentrated on the farming of corn on a large scale, the processing of corn into different products, the corn that is hidden in about a quarter of the things that we eat and use, and the raising of corn fed beef. Each team then presented what they had learned to the rest of the group. We got through about half of the presentations today and will finish the rest of them tomorrow.

Tee Shirt Travels Movie

Today was block schedule and during 2nd period we watched a movie called Tee Shirt Travels. This movie is a documentary from 2000 that follows a used clothing seller in Zambia as he buys a bale of clothes from the US and sells them in his village to raise money to support his family. It explains the economic history of Zambia and other African countries and how they have become inundated with used products from the US and Europe. This extends the story of the origins of our tee shirts and looks at what happens to some of them after we donate them to a thrift store. Here is a link to the PBS program "Independent Lens" in which they describe the film along with some pictures. Here is a link to an activity on their website that allows you to follow the journey of a tee shirt from New York City to Zambia. Tee Shirt Tracker.

A well traveled breakfast

We listened to a short piece from public radio's MarketPlace this morning. It is called "A well-traveled breakfast" and it explores the global connections to the food that we eat in America. It turns out that most of the food that we buy from the grocery store has traveled an average of 1500 miles. Food transportation uses about 240 million barrels of oil a year in the United States, that's about 10% of our national oil production. You can listen to it at this link: MarketPlace Breakfast. Or you can read the transcript here: "A Well Traveled Breakfast." We spent the rest of the morning researching our topics for the "It Costs What?" poster project. Here is a blank chart for taking notes on the research "Outline Notes." We hope to be finished with our research by the end of the week and to start work on making our posters next week.