Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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Brief Summary of Unit:
In this unit on the origins of pizza in New York, students will travel through
time to see the historic, social, and economic factors and effects of food in NYC,
starting with Italian pizza. By reading informational texts on the history of pizza in
the city, students will learn about the origins and motivations behind that
particular food and reflect on the impact today. The central theme students will
come away with is that people and stories shape places, and that the diversity of
these elements in NYC shapes the way people in the city think. To connect these
principles to the students varied experiences and interests, students will each
interview a different family restaurant in the city, especially focusing on the
history of the family, the sources of the recipes, and the growth of the eatery itself
as an establishment. Students will then write and illustrate picture books about
the restaurants they learned about in order to demonstrate their understanding of
the impact of diversity on a city which so many different cultural groups call home.
Throughout the unit, students will be confronted with the big questions about
how amazingly complex the development of culture is, and how humans must love
each other in spite of differences, while recognizing the bonds of human
brotherhood that connect.
(From the New York State K-8 Social Studies Framework p. 49-50)
What essential questions will guide this unit and focus teaching/learning?
Q
What does the history of food/restaurants point to about the history of
people and cities? (specifically, what does pizza have to do with the history of
New York City?)
How did/do families start and keep restaurants running?
What other foods/restaurants are there in the city? What cultures do
they represent?
How does the variety of foods in this city compare to that of other
cities in our state/country?
What key knowledge and skills will students acquire as a result of this
unit?
KS
Students will know:
Information about the brief history of pizza from its earliest days to the
first NYC pizzeria.
What food says about culture in the city.
How immigration in New York history has affected cultural diversity in
the city.
That people and stories, including cultural elements like food, shape
places.
That places shape the people in them.
Students will be able to:
Identify factors and causal relationships within texts about the origins
of NYC pizza (later, also within data from interviews).
Formulate research questions with which to interview family food
business/restaurant owners.
Arrange interview findings according to chronological/causal
progression in a narrative story structure.
Write, revise, illustrate, and publish a picture book to tell the above
narrative using descriptive detail and accurate representation of information.
Score
3.0
Score
2.0
city in the way people interact and live differently from each other.
Students will be able to:
Articulate that several factors caused pizza to come to NYC.
Formulate research questions with which to interview family
food business/restaurant owners.
Arrange interview findings in a narrative form, following a
timeline of events.
Write, revise, illustrate, and publish a picture book to tell the
above narrative with accurate information and some detail.
Score
1.5
Score
many
1.0
foods
That many different people immigrated to the city
in history
With substantial help, students will be able to:
Record research questions for an interview
Share what they found out in the interview
Do some of the work writing, revising, illustrating,
and publishing a book to tell the story as close to the
interview as possible.
Score
0.0
Performance Tasks:
T
Picture Book Project: Students will each interview a different family restaurant in the
city or globally via Skype, especially focusing on the history of the family, the
sources of the recipes, and the growth of the eatery itself as an establishment.
Students will then write and illustrate picture books about the restaurants they
learned about in order to demonstrate their understanding of the impact of diversity
on a city which so many different cultural groups call home.
Rationale: Storytelling is a creative, cohesive way of organizing and presenting
historical/cultural information. This particular assessment addresses the
interpersonal intelligence as students must collaborate with community restaurant
owners and with peers and the teacher for editing. The product itself reflects verbal
and visual intelligence as well, since students write and illustrate the story. Because
students produce and revise their own work, this is also an intrapersonal task.
Absen
Poor
Averag
Good
t0
e2
Excellen
t4
o
Historic elements of the
family story
o
Social factors
surrounding the restaurant
o
The importance of food
to the family as a way of
preserving memories and
heritage
o
The impact of this
particular family on the city and
their community
Students can identify factors and
causal relationships in interview
findings.
Students can identify the
connections between this familys
story and concepts of immigration
and diversity.
Students can arrange findings
according to chronological/causal
story structures. (Outline)
Rough draft of narrative contains
accurate facts and details about the
family business story. (Rough Draft)
Students participate in peer review
and/or teacher conference about
mechanical edits. (Writers
Workshop)
Students type up stories on a Word
Processor to print for their books.
(Publish)
Students create illustrations that
support and embellish the narrative.
OE
Kinesthetic Quiz- arrange events (representative students) into an accurate
historical NYC pizza timeline.
Rationale: Allows students to demonstrate information sequencing and recall while
moving around. Addresses visual and kinesthetic intelligences in the format and
logical intelligence because of the sequencing task.
Cause/Effect Graphic Organizer: create and use a note taking diagram system to
track causal relationships in NYC food history during research and instruction times.
Rationale: Addresses the logical intelligence as it requires students identify causal
relationships, as well as existential intelligence as the relationships reflect the
impact of immigration and cultural practices on the city. Verbal intelligence is
reflected in how information is recorded (in writing) but also visual. Google Docs
gives students access to voice to text to accommodate students with
verbal/linguistic disabilities.
Visual impact mapping students connect strings from countries to NYC and back
out to dialogue boxes with sticky notes about cultural elements in the city and with
links to additional information and media.
Rationale: Addresses existential intelligence since the connections reflect the global
connectedness which cultural practices on the city produce through transcendent
artifacts like food. Gives visual learners a clear picture of that relationship, and
allows students to refresh/look back to the content they discussed (formative
assessment, since the teacher monitors and sees if they accurately see the
locations things come from and if they discerned what information was important
enough to record).
recorded (in writing). Google Docs gives students access to voice to text to
accommodate students with verbal/linguistic disabilities.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.3
Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical text,
Students will get excited about starting a unit on pizza and will
know how pizza came to be a part of society historically.
Materials:
Student work groups create opportunities for peer tutoring and inter-group support,
which helps students with social intimidation of addressing the whole class on their
own. It also gives them opportunity for interpersonal skills, as they work together
collaboratively.
The kinesthetic timeline quiz allows students to demonstrate information
sequencing and recall while moving around. It addresses visual and kinesthetic
intelligences in the format and logical intelligence because of the sequencing task.
State
Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.3
Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical text,
including what happened and why, based on specific information
in the text.
Materials:
Materials:
4. Pizza and the BIG PICTURE: Broadening the unit from Pizza to
Food and Culture, Project Sneak Peek and Start (Interview
Questions)
The teacher will start by guiding students to expand the concepts behind pizza in
NYC to other foods and will segue into the project. As a class, they will brainstorm
other kinds or particular restaurants to interview. They will create some questions
as a class before breaking into loose groups to work on creating more questions.
Will discuss etiquette for interacting with interviewees as a class. Student
homework is to interview a family or restaurant owner using the questions and
record their findings.
Rationale: This lesson starts with high verbal interaction in class discussion,
emboldening students and creating opportunities for peer tutoring through times of
group interaction.
Skype, email, and other technological forms of communication open up doors to
better local and even global connection for students to complete this project.
State
Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.7
Conduct short research projects that build knowledge through
investigation of different aspects of a topic.
Materials:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.7
Conduct short research projects that build knowledge through
investigation of different aspects of a topic.
Materials:
Rough Draft
The teacher will instruct and demonstrate the process of spinning a story out of the
information in its structure, then students will start writing their story. Homework for
the next week will consist of continuing that writing process. Class review on what
plagiarism is and how to avoid it.
Rationale: Most of the instruction will be verbal, with some visual aids. The process
will draw on pulling information from the previous days Popplet mind map to show
the relationship again of the logical connections, and how to form that into a story.
State
Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.3
Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events
Materials:
Plagiarism Video
(https://www.brainpop.com/english/writing/plagiarism/), story
spinning lesson materials (visuals, informational slides) on Google
Slides, interview findings (Good Spreadsheets), smart
devices/computers, Popplet, Google Docs
Accompanies Lesson #6
Students will revise their writing to come even closer to the kind
Objective:
Materials:
Accompanies Lesson #6
Students will type and format their books
Smart devices/computers, Google Docs (story draft), TikaTok online
publishing software
Accompanies Lesson #6
Lesson
Objective:
Students will create art that supports and enlivens their stories.
10.
Students will assess their own and each others completed project and discuss
similar elements and concepts.
Rationale: Gives intra and interpersonal opportunity to assess by sharing the
completed work, reading and discussing verbally and viewing visual elements.
State
Standards:
Accompanies Lesson #6
Lesson
Objective:
Materials:
Completed books