In order to incorporate more math into this unit we did some graphing and did more cooking experiments with the students. We had them practice measuring capacity with the ingredients and reading a recipe too.
The Learning Continues!
It seems like Fair Trade Chocolate will never leave our classroom and I’m quite happy about that!
Recently, we received a letter back from World’s Finest Chocolate. The letter acknowledged our “interest” in their farming practices and informed us about what the company was doing to help it’s farmers and did not mention Fair Trade. As I finished reading the letter aloud to the class, a student bluntly said, “So they aren’t going to do Fair Trade?”
To which another responded, “Well, I’m not eating their chocolate ever again.”
Whether or not the student keeps her word, I’m impressed that they still retained the concept and interest in the subject.
Fair Trade came up again while we were teaching reading workshop. Our lesson had to do with making connections from text to the world. We decided to use the book Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez by Kathleen Krull as a read aloud and let the students make connections as we read. We used this book for a few reasons: 1) It was topical- Cesar Chavez Day was coming up and the kids had been curious about it for weeks. 2)There were many ways students could relate the book to themselves, their world, and other texts.The students immediately related the plight of the farm workers to those they had learned about when studying cocoa farming. One student even suggested that cocoa farmers who were not being treated fairly read the book and have a protest of their own, to help better themselves.
Impact and Assessment
This unit truly impacted our classroom. Students became very critical of things they previously took for granted and wondered a lot about what other unfair things were going on in their world.
Fair Trade chocolate has never left our classroom. Students took their knowledge of the topic to help them write both How-To and All About Books during the required Non-Fiction writing unit and now that we are nearing Valentine’s Day, the discussion of chocolate has flared up again. Luckily for my co-teacher and I, it also happens to be during the letter writing unit so we plan on writing persuasive letters to the World’s Finest Chocolate CEO, as suggested in the Global Exchange Curriculum. We also are using Fair Trade Chocolate chips with our students to melt down and mold into Fair Trade Valentine’s chocolates to be shared with their families.
Here are some examples of the work the students continue to do with the topic:
Assessment of this unit was plentiful but has been informal. We were able to use the students’ movie to uncover what students had actually learned about Fair Trade chocolate but to uncover what students had learned about the importance of social justice we had to rely on discussion and analyzing their conversations.
A few students really felt strongly about not supporting child/slave labor and encouraged their parents to buy Fair Trade products. One student wrote in her homework that she was driving by Whole Foods with her mother, and convinced her to stop and buy Fair Trade chocolate because it was the only place she could find it. Another students’ mother informed us during parent teacher conferences that she was getting frustrated because her child wouldn’t let her buy anything chocolate without first checking to see if it was Fair Trade and then giving her a hard time if it wasn’t. These showed that students understood how to see if things were Fair Trade but didn’t really illustrate if students understood what that meant.
We were afforded this opportunity when students were creating gingerbread houses. Some of the decorations included M&Ms. One student was having a very difficult time with this. She seemed frustrated and torn. She wanted to use them because they were colorful and many of the other students were using them but when asked why she wasn’t using them she explained,
“I don’t want to support that. It’s not fair. Kid’s are dying in Africa because of this and I don’t understand how the other kids are using them.”
This statement was very powerful and really showed us that she grasped the whole concept. It also enabled a discussion amongst the students. Some had listened in and agreed. Though they had used some of the candies already they stopped and declared that they wouldn’t eat that part. Others stated that they could use them if they wanted. I made sure that all the students remembered where the M&Ms came from and what it meant that they were not Fair Trade and told them to make the decision they felt was right for them. And they did.
Sharing Our Knowledge
My co-teacher and I, now thought we were finished with this unit. Our students informed us that we had thought wrong. They now had all this knowledge and desperately needed to share it with someone. They talked with their parents and their siblings but this wasn’t enough. Some of their families didn’t believe them and the students wanted us to do something about it.
Seeing how engaged and concerned the students were made us decide to continue our study. But what could we do? My co-teacher suggested we have an open house type presentation. Here students could show their work and educate others about the chocolate industry and the continued presence of slave and child labor in agriculture. We suggested this to the students and they loved the idea. They thought we should make a movie so that the whole school could learn what we had learned. As a class we outlined what we would talk about in the movie. We divided up the different sections and students decided what they would say. The students recorded themselves talking about their points using iMovie. We compiled all this together into a movie but in the end it was a bit confusing. Rather than scraping the whole idea, students decided to use the videos in a powerpoint this way we could include pictures and write out the important points people needed to remember. So as a class we did just that.
My co-teacher felt that though the movie/powerpoint was great, we still needed something more concrete and visual so that the Deaf students could fully grasp what we were talking about. She came up with the idea of having a skit where students would act out life on a Fair Trade cocoa farm and on a non-fair trade one. Students loved the opportunity to act and were very enthusiastic about this.
Now with our plan fully underway we invited classes and students’ families to come visit our room and learn about Fair Trade Chocolate. Our invitations were cleverly disguised as chocolate bars, which added a little extra something special. Teachers, parents, administrators and students came in to see our class’s video and skit. At the end we asked them to explain what they learned and had them search popular candy wrapper labels for Fair Trade logos. Our visitors praised the students for their hard work and asked them questions about where to find Fair Trade chocolate, as well as if certain brands were Fair Trade or not.
At the end everyone got to taste some Fair Trade chocolate and leave us some feedback. All of which was positive!
The Lessons Part 3
Now students not only understood where chocolate came from but also understood the unjust practices used to harvest cocoa. They were angry and wanted to know how they could help. We continued our teaching and educated students about Fair Trade. After reading about the process students still did not fully grasp it. Through a simulation we were able to illustrate the point better. We had sets of students act out working on a Fair Trade farm and a non-fair trade farm. They each put in equal amounts of work but the Fair Trade farmer got paid better. We also gave one person in each group a “sick” card. The Fair Trade farmer who was sick was able to go to the doctor and pay with the money earned. While the non-fair trade farmer who was sick had to continue to work and was unable to visit the doctor and get better. This really illustrated the importance of access to community resources such as doctors and school that was not available to slaves and child laborers in most cocoa farms.
As we neared the end of our unit (or so we thought) we showed students the Fair Trade logo that they could look for so that their future candy purchases would help support Fair Trade. Students began bringing in their Halloween candy to have us search for the logo. Sadly, none of their treats had it. Some students refused to eat it. Then some of them started to notice that chocolate was in other things, like cookies. These packages were searched thoroughly for the Fair Trade logo, and also came up short.
“Well where do we find it?”
That was a great question. My co-teacher and I decided we should have a scavenger hunt. We had heard from our principal that a local health supply store actually carried the product. We decided to take our students to several familiar places that carried chocolate to see if we could find Fair Trade products there. This would help students, who were really invested in helping, know where they could have their parents shop for this. We took students to a newstand, Duane Reade, a grocery store, the health supply store, the Union Square Farmer’s Market, and finally to Whole Foods Market. We searched and searched and were only able to find what we were looking for at Whole Foods. We were stopped by security but when we told them we were going to buy something they let us through. The kids went wild when they found a whole aisle filled with Fair Trade chocolate bars, tea, hot chocolate, and other products. We took pictures and bought a few bars so that the students could taste the chocolate that they had long searched for. I probably don’t have to say this but…THEY LOVED IT!
The Lessons Part 2
Now that students understood where chocolate came from and how chocolate got to them, it was time to dig a little deeper. We were going to have show students that many of their favorite chocolate treats were made by slaves/children just like them. This was surprisingly harder to do than I had originally planned. It was hard for us to just shatter our students’ ideas about the world but we had to show them the truth. After a staff meeting where we were told to work off students’ emotions when teaching, my co-teacher and I knew that we would be doing the right thing by teaching our students this. At a meeting with our principal and assistant principal we told them about our social studies unit. They loved the idea and wanted to learn along with the students.
We continued working in the workbook with the students and watched as they were outraged to learn that slaves and children made their chocolate. “THAT’S NOT FAIR!” “WHY ARE KIDS DOING THIS?” “HOW CAN THEY GET PAID SO LITTLE?” “HOW CAN THEY GROW UP AND GET A JOB IF THEY CAN’T GO TO SCHOOL?”
Their outrage showed us that they understood the problem. They knew something was unfair and to them this was unacceptable. They answered the questions in their workbooks and poured out their feelings about the injustice.
We also used supplemental books such as Bella’s Chocolate Surprise during Read Aloud time to keep the idea fresh in students’ minds. 
This book was not the greatest (confusing vocabulary) but the students definitely saw the connections and understand the point.
The Lessons Part 1
We decided to use the Fair Trade Chocolate Book provided on the website with our students. We decided it would be best to cover about 2 pages a day with our students so that they could fully grasp each concept. We dissected the book into parts that would make sense to go together and as a class we would read and answer the questions in the book.
The students were excited and invested. Often we would have to stop them from reading ahead. They were shocked to learn that chocolate came from a bean that comes from a tree. We found color pictures on the internet so that students could better understand what the cocoa pods/beans looked like.
They loved learning about the process of harvesting and producing chocolate. For this section we had students read each step in the process and then act each step out. This was fun for the students and really helped them comprehend all the hard labor that goes into cocoa production. The next morning we wrote each step the students identified out on sentence strips and had them draw a picture to match each step. They then put the steps in the correct order and we created a giant chocolate bar that had all the steps of the process on it.
This was helpful for getting students ready to engage in the next writing unit of How-To Procedural writing and was a great way to assess what students were learning.
Getting Started
Where to begin? This was a tough question. Before we could educate our students about this my co-teacher and I had to educate ourselves. I knew a little bit about the topic from my colleague’s work but my co-teacher didn’t know anything about the topic. We both researched Fair Trade Chocolate and became familiar enough with the concept so that we could teach our students.
We started by reviewing what they knew about communities. The students were able to tell us that communities have places like schools and stores and that they have people who live and work there. We then told students that we would be studying a specific type of community. One where farming was the main business. Students were excited and we did a KWL chart to see what students knew and wanted to know about farming communities. Their knowledge was pretty much what we expected; farmers work on farms and they have animals and they grow food. Their questions ranged from who really works on the farm to what kinds of tools do farmers use and how long does it take to grow food. These questions would serve as great guides to how we would focus our teaching.
We repeated the KWL chart with students about chocolate. They knew it was delicious and they knew that it came from stores. But that’s where their knowledge stopped. We told students that we would be studying farms that grew chocolate! This blew their minds. There was excited chatter throughout the classroom. We knew that this was going to be a fun and interesting unit.
My co-teacher and I went to the Global Exchange website (http://www.globalexchange.org/) and printed out the curriculum guides they have. After thoroughly reading through them we knew we would have to make some changes for our students because they were a bit younger than those that the curriculum was intended for and because our students were Deaf and needed more visuals t0 help them fully understand the concept.
Humble Beginnings
I started this unit with my 2nd graders as part of the required social studies curriculum. According to the NY state standards 2nd graders should be able to identify different types of communities(urban, suburban, rural), understand that each have their own special features, and how they interact with each other.
As my class examined/sorted pictures of different communities and created and classified their own communities, my co-teacher and I noticed that their work became beautiful yet stereotypical depictions of these places. Students understood that agriculture played a huge part in the workings of many rural communities and their drawings reflected this. They drew familiar pictures of a male farmer smiling with his cows as he stood in front of his red barn.
Knowing very well that this is not what farming actually looks like, my co-teacher and I decided to spice things up a bit and push our students into uncovering hidden truths about agricultural practices. But how could we do this? It was the end of October and there was so much we could talk about. Where should we start?
With this in mind I decided to teach my students about cocoa farming, child/slave labor, and Fair Trade practices. I drew my inspiration for this unit from a colleague’s work on the subject with his 5th grade class. (http://cacoaproject.wordpress.com/)
I showed this to my co-teacher and we both felt that this was something we could do with our 7 year olds. The hook was easy. Halloween was right around the corner and this was chocolate. We just had to figure out how to make this topic accessible to the 2nd grade students.
