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Description
Agriculture requires huge volumes of water for crop irrigation, animal hydration and processing of food products. Unfortunately, agricultural impacts on ecosystems threaten pollinating insects like Monarch butterflies that are essential to growing the grains, fruits and vegetables we need. As one of the activities from the “Teaching Tools about Monarchs” series, this lesson introduces students to the connections between food production, water consumption and habitat impacts. As they examine the amounts of water needed to make popular lunch items students will:
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Represent their data using a pictograph.
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Describe how water is used to produce their lunch through each supply chain stage.
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Analyze how agricultural water use impacts habitats.
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Develop personal strategies to reduce their own ecological footprint.
General Assessment
Recommendation of how and where to use it
This resource can be used to support Grade 3-6 mathematics learning related to analyzing statistics, graphing and working with whole numbers. Students use multiplication and division to calculate water totals of food items and construct charts. The lesson also supports science concepts related to the environmental impacts of natural resource use. Partnering this activity with the “Eating Our Planet” lesson would provide a comprehensive unit on the topic of food waste and the role of personal stewardship in conservation.
Monarch butterflies depend on Milkweed for reproduction. A class could research and grow Milkweed plants that are best suited to their region and plant them in areas like municipal flower beds and community gardens. Monitoring butterfly use of the flowers could be used to raise awareness of the value of providing pollinator habitat in gardens. If students are fortunate enough to find a “tagged” Monarch they can report their finding through the Monarch Watch website to learn about the route the individual has travelled.
Relevant Curriculum Units
The following tool will allow you to explore the relevant curriculum matches for this resource. To start, select a province listed below.
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- Alberta
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- Computational fluency and flexibility with numbers extend to operations with whole numbers and decimals
- Data from the results of an experiment can be used to predict the theoretical probability of an event and to compare and interpret
Themes Addressed
Citizenship (1)
- Sustainable Consumption
Ecosystems (2)
- Endangered Species
- Habitat Loss
Food & Agriculture (1)
- Conventional Farming
Water (1)
- Water Use
