Mapping Thanksgiving foods and crops
ArcGIS StoryMaps can be used effectively to teach about spatial patterns through interactive mapping enabled by Web GIS. Use this storymap from our colleagues on the Story Maps team to teach about where traditional Thanksgiving foods are grown and created.
Turn the map into a quiz! As I demonstrate in this video, consider turning the Thanksgiving harvest story map into a fun quiz that encourages spatial thinking. Show each map in sequence, hiding the legend and the title, and draw attention to the latitude, proximity to coasts, landforms, and population in those areas where some of that food was grown, created, or harvested. As you do, you are drawing on prior knowledge of what you know about the land use, climate, soils, elevation, and other characteristics of those areas where those crops are clustered, and where they are absent. Consider making the quiz multiple choice by providing 3 possible answers for each map. Each map contains pertinent information, such as the following (note that I am hiding the answer here): "While the majority of harvested ____ are destined for use in ___ , ___ , and the like, many end up on Thanksgiving dinner tables as ____. Just two states—Idaho and Washington—provide more than half of the total U.S. crop." Without looking at the map, can you guess what food is being referred to? How helpful is looking at the map, below?
Which traditional Thanksgiving food produced is shown by this map?
How about the following? It might be a little more challenging!
Which traditional Thanksgiving food produced is shown by this map? Is this easier or more difficult to discern than the first map?
For another Thanksgiving-themed teaching resource, see the story map Pardoning Pickles by my creative Esri colleagues, here: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/a-geopuzzle-for-thanksgiving-pardoning-pickles/ba-p/155.... This story about returning a turkey to its home after receiving a Thanksgiving pardon is a geopuzzle--a site suitability analysis that incorporates a half dozen data layers to find Pickles' home.
Some of my Thanksgiving favorites I share in this video. But for many years, my family held non-traditional Thanksgiving dinners to celebrate the food cultures in other parts of the world. If your family does something similar, why not use the agricultural census data, which I describe how to use, here, to examine where those foods are grown or created?
Beyond Thanksgiving Day, use web maps and GIS agricultural data to help your students understand the patterns of crops and livestock, throughout the year. A few of my favorite books in teaching about food production and consumption are Hungry Planet, by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, with those striking images of theirs representing everything that families in many places around the world eat, and The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. What are your favorite books about the geography of food?
Teaching about agriculture using interactive mapping and GIS leads to some fascinating discussions about climate, weather, land use, what different cultures eat, and other topics described above, but also foster connections to mathematics, statistics, physical geography, cultural geography, sociology, economics, business, and many other fields. Review these story maps about food in the Story Map gallery and consider using them in your own instruction. Once again, GIS serves as a bridge between disciplines.