If you’ve read any of my articles before or know me as a teacher, you know I try to provide authentic, real-world experiences in my classroom whenever I can. I love when I have the opportunity to make some cross-curricular connections between ELA and other content areas, especially if the topic is applicable to life outside of school.
I live and teach in a rural area, so it was an added bonus to bring an agricultural topic into my curriculum this year. I recently received a grant through Illinois Agriculture in the Classroom (IAITC), which allowed me to purchase a class set of Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman. In the novel, the main characters struggle to survive as their community’s water supply is suddenly shut off. This forces them to face many roadblocks and ethical questions along the way as they fight for their lives.
Before reading Dry, I designed a unit dedicated to helping students understand water-related issues in our world. Not only did I want students to understand how invaluable reliable water is to their own personal health, but I also wanted them to see how lack of water access causes social justice and political issues as well. There were many pieces to this quarter-long project, as I also used it to satisfy some of the dual credit research requirements for the course. Here’s a broad overview of what I did:
- Using Canva, I created nine different stations, each one about a different water issue in the world. Topics included water infrastructure issues, industrial pollution, fracking contamination, agricultural impacts, algal blooms and red tides, food and drug contamination, flooding and sea level rise, water scarcity, and water wars. Each station contained an image and QR codes for a video and an article about the issue.
A student used her iPad to learn more about water wars around the world.
- After students were exposed to the various water issues, they worked in groups to select a topic for further research. Groups then wrote a research essay that gave an overview of the issue, explained how the problem causes inequality amongst human populations, and provided a case study of one particular area that was affected by the issue. They also wrote a letter to a lawmaker or general audience that offered solutions for improving the problem.
- Students presented their research projects to the class. As groups were presenting, I noticed that quite a few made connections to the agriculture industry. Some groups presented explicitly on how chemicals used in farming can pollute local water sources. Groups who presented on water scarcity discussed how farming uses the majority of a water source and how water has to sometimes be transported into dry areas to grow crops that need an abundance of water. Others discussed how changes in the diet of the average American has led to the need for more water on dairy farms. As groups presented, students wrote down what they learned and what questions they had, and we had a discussion about each topic.
- We rounded out the unit with a novel study on Dry. During the unit, I used the resources available on the IAITC website. As we discussed the novel, we touched on agricultural topics such as what supplies would be needed to sustain life in a drought, what happens when people are without food and water, the amount of water needed to grow different crops, etc.
What I loved most about this unit is that it gave me the opportunity to teach the research skills required by the course while engaging with a topic that is growing increasingly important in our world. This always has been and will continue to be something I strive for as a teacher.
In the future, I would like to extend this project beyond my classroom. How can students use what they learned from their research to inform a wider audience about the importance of salialbe water? Are there ways to engage students in a hands-on way? Perhaps they can use what they learned to create homemade water filters or develop a system for collecting rainwater. Figuring out how to extend this project to continue making it applicable to the world outside the classroom is one of my top priorities for reflection as we close out the school year.
What are some projects you do that involve real-world topics? Do you have ideas for helping students have meaningful learning experience as they research water related issues? I’d love to hear your ideas on X @TimmermanPaige.
At Moving Writers, we love sharing our materials with you, and we work hard to ensure we are posting high-quality work that is both innovative and practical. Please help us continue to make this possible by refraining from selling our intellectual property or presenting it as your own. Thanks!
moving writers 