The Good, The Bad & The Ugly of Hog Farms

Lesson title
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly of Industrial Hog Farms
Author(s)
Branson Phillips
School site
Durham, NC
Grade level/content area focus
6-8 Science
Essential Question How does the introduction of a large-scale farm effect the surrounding area?
Content Question Do the positives out weigh the negatives in have a hog farm built in your community?

Notes:
• It is important that the teacher does not allow their own biases affect the students during this lesson!
• The students will be taking the part of a local community member in this project so there are no role changes initially in this project.
• Once the planning, design and production phases starts the students will then take on the roles of (production manager, designer, photographer/editor, and builder


Student Learning Objectives & Higher Order thinking Q (HOTS):
• Students will gain an understanding of how an industrial hog farm functions and the positives and negatives of having a farm like this located near to their community.
• Students will then create a stop action persuasive commercial of their stance on whether or not the farm should be allowed to be built.
• HOTS: Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation

Materials:
1) Digital Camera
2) Tripod
3) Computer with SAM animation software
4) Internet access
5) Materials for students to create video

Lesson Plan
Opening/Warm-up: The students will discuss their favorite types of barbeque and were the meat comes from.
Agenda:
1) The students will be told that Smithfield farm wants to build a new large-scale hog farm in their community.
2) The students will then be told that both Smithfield and a local environmental organization want to create persuasive commercials for or against the building of the new hog farm.
3) The students will research the short term and long term economic affects of having a large-scale farm in a community.
4) The students will then investigate the environmental affects of the farm waste on the surrounding land.
5) Once the students have looked at both sides of the scenario they will analysis their information and decide which stance they will take.
6) Once the students have chosen a stance they will design a storyboard for their movie depicting their stance on the topic.
7) The story board should include:
• A clear vision of the students stance on the topic
• Any text or audio that will be used in the commercial and where it will be used
• What the area/community looked like before the building of the farm
• The transition of the area/community from the initial introduction of the farm to fifteen years in the future
8) After the students have created their storyboard they then will make a list of materials that will be needed to make their persuasive commercial.
9) The students will then be able start to create their commercial using the digital cameras to record each frame of their commercial.
10) Once the students have taken all the frames needed for their commercial then they will use the software program SAM animation to put together the commercial.








Closing: The students will decide their stance on whether or not they would want this type of farm brought into their town.

Tomorrow’s Lesson/Changes for next time:
• When the students return to class they will be informed that the deadline has been moved up to allow the public to have more time in making their decision on if the farm should be allowed to be built.