Letter Writing Lesson: Diet and Identity
Lesson Plan
1 hour 15 minutesGrades9, 10English Language Arts, Health
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Written by Kara Hisatake
About this lesson
Students discuss the food they eat, and how it relates to climate change, and write a letter to a food company.
Inquire: Students chart foods they have eaten recently and wonder how food is meaningful.
Investigate: Students compare and contrast foods that contribute to and mitigate climate change, and explore how food is part of their identity.
Inspire: Students write a persuasive letter to a company about how their products can help diets be more climate-friendly.
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Suggestions
- This lesson aligns with Hawai’i’s Nā Hopena A‘o HĀ-BREATH Framework.
- This lesson may be turned into a longer unit project regarding research that aligns with English Language Arts, Social Studies, and Health standards.
- This lesson can be completed over two days, with reflection questions, lists, and the letter assigned as homework.
- Students connect with their family history and identity through food culture and are given a voice about what choices they make regarding their diet.
Prerequisites
- This lesson should be previewed in advance by the teacher. The teacher should review the resources and possible foods that contribute to or mitigate climate change.
- Students should understand that an argument consists of a claim and evidence.
Differentiation
- This lesson can be used in a writer’s workshop or extended into a peer review and revision process.
- Students may share their letters with the company they chose or the community.
- This lesson can be paired with The Carbon Footprint of Food lesson.
From the scientist review
Students can discover how identity, dietary choices, and climate change are all related. Their curiosity about the origins of various foods, how food may reveal a person's culture, and how to lessen their carbon footprint will be piqued. After review, every resource used in the lesson passed our test for scientific reliability.
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About the teacher writer
Kara Hisatake
Teacher
Kara Hisatake holds a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She has more than six years of experience teaching high school English Language Arts for grades 9–12. Her expertise is in literature and English language arts education.
