Overview
The lesson begins by asking students to remember the food and water that they had access to that morning. Following an introduction to the right to food and water, the students explore how the negative impacts of the pandemic are more pronounced in places where there is underlying food insecurity or a lack of potable water. Student will engage in case studies from Uganda and the Navajo nation through videos and written text.
This lesson can be broken into two classes.
Grade Level
9th-12th Grades
Essential questions the lesson will address:
● What does it mean to have a right to food and water?
● What does the right to food & water mean in terms of government responsibilities to ensure that subsistence needs are met during a crisis and beyond?
Learning Outcomes
Students will be able to:
● Understand that not everyone has access to adequate food & clean water.
● Recognize that the right to food & water is linked with other rights, such as the right to health.
● Identify strategies for ensuring access to nutritious food and clean water.
● Analyze cross-context differences in access to nutritious food & clean water, and apply these to the students’ local community.
Common Core State Standards
● CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.1
unMASKing Curriculum Glossary
● Food Insecurity: unable to consistently access or afford adequate food (Merriam-Webster).
● Potable Water: water that is safe for drinking (Merriam-Webster).
Formative Assessment Strategies
The teacher can make note of:
● Class-wide identification of their everyday access to and use of food and water.
● Small group presentations of group work.
● Class-wide discussion around lessons to be learned from the pandemic about access to food and water.
● Individual student participation in making a drawings group work and in whole class discussions.
● Students’ homework, in which learners journal about lessons from the pandemic about the right to food and water.
Materials for Instructor
● Access to the Internet and a screen for showing videos to students.
● Pandemic Curriculum Glossary Board (Physical or Virtual)
● Whiteboard/Blackboard and chalk/marker
Materials for Students
● Handout: Right to Food and Water in Uganda
● Handout: Right to Water and the Navajo Nation
● Handout: Group Activity Questions
LESSON PLAN
I. Drawing daily use of food & water (6 min.)
Ask students to quickly draw on a piece of paper how they have used or consumed water and food that day. These don’t need to be fancy drawings! The images should represent at least three water and food items they have made use of today, whether directly (through consumption) or indirectly (e.g., watering their plants or giving their pet something to eat).
Students share their drawings with their neighbor.
General debrief on the activity, listing the students’ contact with food & water. Would the students say that they have sufficient access to food? To water?
Christopher Morris: COVID-19 empty store shelves (Instagram)
II. Videos and case study analysis (40 min.)
Step One (10 minutes)
Show to students “Is water a human right?”, a short (2:16 minute) video on the right to water. March 19, 2015
Highlight for students that the right to water includes general access to water as well as access to clean, drinkable water, also known as potable water. What are some of the human rights links with access to clean water? (For example, right to food, right to health) How do you think access to water might be especially important during the pandemic crisis? (Ability to wash one’s hands, one’s food for sanitation reasons.)
There is also a right to food. Food insecurity is defined as limited or uncertain access to food. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity has increased.
By the end of April 2020, more than one in five households in the United States, and two in five households with mothers with children 12 and under, were food insecure. With 30 million children in the U.S. dependent on school for one or more of their meals each week, extended school closures and loss of family income mean food insecurity rates will continue to rise. Globally, the pandemic could nearly double the number of people suffering acute hunger, totaling more than a quarter of a billion people by the end of the year. Save the Children (nd). https://www.savethechildren.org/us/charity-stories/food-insecurity-america-malnutrition-united-states
Step Two (25 minutes)
Break the students into small groups and give them either the handout on Uganda or the Navajo Nation. Half of the groups consider the Navajo Nation’s access to water example and the other half Uganda’s access to food & water example.
Distribute the handouts for Group Activity Questions and encourage students to take notes on their case example. Show the videos for Uganda and the Navajo Nation below as a warm-up to the group work.
Three-minute video of food relief in Uganda. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4gyZ6U9XSw NTVUganda. April 4, 2020.
Some de-brief questions to check for understanding:
● How did the Ugandan government try to ensure the safety of people when distributing food? (delivered door-to-door, no people lining up)
● Who were the government officials distributing the food? (military)
● What were some of the missing items mentioned by people? (milk, charcoal for making fires to cook the food)
Three-minute video on conditions of the Navajo nation, particularly in relation to access to water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=6Tvqx1RePVo&feature=emb_logo NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt - Preview: Impact of Navajo Nation's water crisis amid a pandemic August 3, 2020.
Some de-brief questions to check for understanding:
● What are some of the reasons why the Navajo Nation reservation shown in the film does not have water? (long distance from the closest city, water contaminated from uranium mining)
● How does the lack of running water make the residents more vulnerable during the pandemic? (they can’t readily wash and sanitize their hands and other items)
● Who are the different government officials mentioned in the film? (federal government and local council member from the Navajo Nation)
The groups review the handout for their respective case study and answer the set of questions as best they can, based on the information provided. (They may not be able to address all of the questions.) A scribe should take notes and be prepared to share the group’s responses.
● What is impeding access to food and water during the pandemic?
● Is this related to preexisting conditions of vulnerability? If so, which ones?
● What role has the government played in guaranteeing access to food and water?
● What role has civil society organizations played in guaranteeing access to food and water?
● What actions have ordinary people done to ensure access to food and water?
Step Three (10 minutes)
Share and debrief (according to the questions).
III. Closing discussion (5 min.)
The lesson concludes with a brief discussion on the questions:
● Is anyone struggling with access to food & water in our local community?
● If so, how is this problem being addressed?
IV. Homework
Students can journal or write a short essay on the question: What lessons can we learn from the pandemic about the right to food and water?