Lesson 2: SySTEMS Thinking

Mag 29 2013

Source: NYSCI

Summary Information

Keywords:

THINK, App, Mapping, Understanding, Believing, system, interaction, food system, nutrition, energy, environmental impact

Topic:

Earth Science

Physical Science

Workplace Skills:

Raising Questions

Problem Solving

Investigation Design

Secondary Research

Planning investigation

Use of Data

Discussion

Recording & Reporting

Teamwork

Independent Thinking

Estimated Time Required:

5-8 hours

Target Grade (Ages):

Grade 7 (Ages 12-13)

Grade 8 (Ages 13-14)

Grade 9 (Ages 14-15)

Grade 10 (Ages 15-16)

Grade 11 (Ages 16-17)

Grade 12 (Ages 17-18)

Diversity Indicators:

This lesson requires students to collect data in their school or neighborhood. Accommodations should be made for students with limited mobility.

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LESSON

Goals and Prerequisites

Goals:

To encourage students to think about the importance of analyzing the local food system
To provide students with the opportunity to generate a simple model of the local food system
To allow students to gather information about a suspected problem within the local food system

Prerequisites:

Students should have completed SySTEMs Thinking 1. In addition, this set of lessons asks students to refer to the SMUBA (Seeing, Mapping, Understanding, Believing, Acting) Process of Innovation. It is strongly suggested that you complete the lesson THINK: The Process of Innovation to give your students a base understanding of the SMUBA Process before implementing this lesson.

Instructional Objective(s)

This lesson requires students to collect data in their school or neighborhood. Accommodations should be made for students with limited mobility.

Instructional Resources

Background:

A food system consists of the resources, people, and processes needed to feed people or a subset of people. This can include food production, processing, packaging, transportation, advertising, consumption, and disposal of food. Depending upon how they are defined, food systems can be massive. For example, the global food system includes more inputs and outputs than the food system for a single school, and even a single school constitutes a complex system. Be sure that your students set reasonable boundaries when defining the local food system. For this lesson, you should limit your students’ analysis to the food system within a neighborhood near the school. If this is not feasible, then you can focus in on the food system within the school itself.

Part 1 of the lesson asks you to provide students with sample diagrams or representations of food systems. An Internet search for food systems will yield many different images to choose from, and you can try finding a diagram for your area in particular. For a simple, printable representation of a food system, see the Food System Map created by the Nourish initiative. For something more complex, visit The Maryland Food System Map, an interactive example that can be used to help your students think about food systems.

The problems your students identify within the food system for Part 2 of this lesson will be dependent upon their experiences. Be sure that you take time to think about how to present this lesson in a way that is sensitive to each student’s individual situation. Similarly, you may preselect the problem you would like your students to focus on in Part 2 to ensure that they will actually be able to collect data related to the problem.

The term food system refers to more than just nutritional aspects of food, although this might be the factor students have heard about most often. Throughout this lesson, prompt students to think about other ways the food system impacts their communities. These impacts can be negative or positive, and students should think about trade-offs at each point in the system. Here are some examples.

Personal interactions: Shopping at large chain stores with extensive automation and prepared foods can mean less time interacting with people. Conversely, food carts or farmer’s markets can mean more interaction with the same people week after week.
Environmental impact: Food production practices, as well as packaging, transportation, food waste, and food disposal can all impact the environment. Some foods travel thousands of miles, which requires large amounts of energy, while other foods, such as those produced by rooftop gardens, can have positive environmental impacts.
Energy levels: Food provides us the energy we need to live our lives, but unhealthy foods can make us feel lethargic or cause unhealthy sleeping habits.
Economics: The price of food affects our ability to purchase certain healthy items. On the other hand, eating cheap but unhealthy foods could result in high health care costs down the road. It is also important to consider the jobs created by the different parts of the food system.
Transportation: Not only does food have to be transported from where it is produced, but people then have to get to a place where food is sold. In some areas, people have easy access to food, but in others, the nearest grocery store could be miles away. Additionally, a person’s transportations options can impact the foods they consume. A few miles might not make a difference if you own a car, but it could be very daunting if you have to carry groceries on public transportation or walk.

If students completed THINK: The Process of Innovation many weeks prior to this lesson, have students re-watch one of the Believing videos during Part 2 of this lesson. The video “Safeguarding the food supply” is particularly relevant to this lesson.

The data collection planning process, as well as data collection itself, can take place during class time or assigned as group homework. A Data Collection Planning Document is provided to help structure the planning process, and you can edit the document to add or modify criteria. If necessary, help students refine their plan so that it is feasible within the time frame you have set aside for this lesson.

Vocabulary

Food System: The resources, people, and processes needed to feed people or a subset of people. This includes food production, processing, packaging, transportation, advertising, consumption, and disposal of food.

Materials:

Part 1

Chart paper/SMART Board for brainstorming the food system
THINK App

Part 2

Copies of Data Collection Planning Document - 1 per student
Student selected tools for data collection and documentation, such as clipboards, cameras, stopwatches, etc.

Procedure:

Part 1: Defining the Local Food System

Tell students that after a general look at systems, they will now be thinking about food systems in particular. Inform students that a food system includes all of the people and resources needed for food production, processing, packaging, transportation, advertising, consumption, and disposal of food.
Students will now consider why we care about analyzing the food system other than the obvious reason of needing food for survival. Split students into five groups and have each group discuss one of the following questions.

Group Work Video

How does accessing or purchasing food in different places affect the local sense of community, either positively or negatively? (Think of a large grocery store, school lunch, food truck, farmer’s market, or a small corner store.)
How does what we eat affect energy levels? (Think about sleep habits, the type of energy different foods provide, etc.)
How do the production, transportation, and consumption of food affect the local environment, either positively or negatively?
What role does advertising play in what students at this school want to eat?
How is the food served at lunch transported to the school?
Where does waste occur within the food system?

After groups have had about 7 minutes to discuss, ask each group to briefly share out the topics that arose during the discussion.
Tell students that depending upon the size of the system you are analyzing, it may be impossible to collect and organize an exhaustive set of data. For this reason, it helps to create a model of the system or part of the system.
Referring back to the lesson THINK: The Process of Innovation, remind students that models are not just physical representations of objects. Models help reveal cause and effect, but depending upon what data is included in the model, different information can be revealed or lost.
Ask students to read the case study “Where will crime hit next?” in the Understanding module of the THINK app.
After students have explored that example, ask them what information can be seen in the Blue CRUSH hotspot map (time of crime, location of the crime, location of apartments and retail buildings). Ask students how the information revealed would change if the type of crime was left out of the model. If the location of retail buildings was not indicated?
Tell students that they will now apply the same type of thinking to looking at local food systems issues.
Now, as a class, create a visual representation of what might be included in a local food system. To start, discuss boundaries. For example, a pond might be considered its own system or it might be part of a larger system such as the water cycle depending upon the level of analysis. As a class, decide how you will define the boundaries of the local food system. Will you use certain streets as boundaries? Are there geographical features that might be better? Social features?
Now, identify the inputs and outputs of the local food system.
Present students with other representations of food systems, such as the Nourish Food System Map. Ask students to compare and contrast these diagrams with their responses.

Part 2: Modeling the Local Food System: “Sticking Points”

Given the complexity of the system, there can be problems or “gaps”. Ask students to list some of the problems they might see within the local food system as defined by the boundaries in Part 1. Remind students that thinking about food systems goes beyond considering nutrition. (Sample answers: high prices, transportation issues, differences in advertising and packaging of healthy vs. non-healthy foods, food safety issues)
Ask students how they know those problems exist. (Students might share personal experiences and observations.) Ask students to think back to the Believing videos they watched during the lesson THINK: The Process of Innovation. Do they think personal stories would have been enough to get buy in from others in the examples presented in the videos?
In order to get an accurate idea of what issues exist and where in the system these sticking points occur, as well as to get buy in for proposed solutions, it is important to take the foundations of the model of the local food system created in Part 1 and now populate it with data.
As a class, decide on one potential problem or “sticking point” to explore.
To make the data collection process more manageable, split students into groups based on the local food system inputs, outputs, and processes defined in Part 1. For example, one group might analyze the transportation of food and people within the system, and another group might focus on how food is advertised and marketed. Depending upon the problem you have selected, you do not need to include all of the inputs and outputs of the system.
Instruct each group to use the Data Collection Planning Document to develop a detailed procedure for collecting data about their part of the system. Present students with any constraints such as time limits, particular materials, or geographical areas to focus on. Inform students that they will eventually be combining their data to create a fuller model, so they should think about how the information they collect should be displayed. Will they document using photos? Will they collect quantitative data and use graphs? Will they use surveys to interview people and display quotations?

For example, as a class you may have decided to look at the food system within a ten-block radius of their school. One group might be looking at how easy it is to get to the supermarkets in this ten-block radius. Using the Data Collection Planning Document, they might outline a procedure that says they will physically walk to every grocery store and take photos of the condition of the sidewalk, time how long it takes to walk, time how long they have to wait for a walk sign at a crosswalk, and use photos to document any bus stops they encounter along the way. They would follow their own steps to gather the information outlined above, and this would represent their data set that they will then work with in lesson 3.

Another group might outline a procedure that says they will look at the price of ten foods at a variety of stores in the same ten-block radius. The list might include 5 common healthy foods and 5 common unhealthy foods. They will record the price per serving, the calories per serving, the grams of fat per serving and the grams of sodium per serving.

Before students can move on to actually collecting their data, they must present you with a completed Data Collection Planning Document.
Upon your approval, they should then carry out their data collection process in the neighborhood. This can be done as a group field trip, or can be assigned as a project to be completed as homework.

Extensions

Give students time to research answers to the questions in Part 1, Step 2 and then create more detailed presentations.

Assessments and Rubrics

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Credits

This lesson was developed by the New York Hall of Science.

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