- Audience: 12th Grade English or Economics, reading at grade level
- For English, the anchor text would be $2 a Day, promoting "social and cross-cultural skills, diversity, and global competence."
- For Economics, the anchor text would be the course textbook, and $2 a Day would serve as a supplement to address content framework sections "What is Capitalism?" and/or "How are resources distributed?"
- Essential Questions: What are the real-life daily struggles of people who live in poverty in America? What can we do about it?
- Set Purpose: Promoting compassion for disadvantaged and underrepresented populations, dispelling myths, challenging assumptions and stereotypes, bringing awareness
Interactive Poverty MapClick here for an interactive map, created by CCHD, showing poverty statistics at the state and county levels.
This map does not require instructor direction, but initial instructor-led discussions and explanations are helpful. Students could use this as a source for data to incorporate in a research paper. |
Anchor TextClick here for the promotion website for $2 a Day.
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Distribution of WealthClick here for an interactive map by the New York Times, based on the US Census Bureau statistics.
This map also does not require instructor direction, but initial instructor-led discussions and explanations are helpful. Students could use this as a source for data to incorporate in a research paper. |
Supporting Materials
- Interview with the authors of $2 a Day
- This is a written interview handout, Q&A style, but at a higher reading level than the intended audience for this text set. This handout would be most effectively used in a teacher-led activity, particularly in a class discussion exploring the authors' purpose and methods in writing $2 a Day. There are some visuals incorporated (charts and graphs) that highlight the numbers a little more clearly, but overall this information is a little too deep to expect students to fully digest independently.
- Spent, Urban Ministries of Durham
- This is an amazing online "game," similar to the board game Life, where the player begins with a realistic situation (job, apartment, family) and makes choices each day to save or spend money, depending on what happens. The choices might have positive or negative consequences, but often have a combination of both. The player is given scenarios and choices for an entire month, and the goal is to make the paychecks last for those 30 days. The game is incredibly user-friendly and visually-appealing. Instructors should introduce and maybe demonstrate the first few stages of the game, but students could work independently or in pairs, discussing the choices they would make in each scenario. Though some of the particular scenarios might not be familiar to all students, the reading level and content would be appropriate for grade 12 and even students reading slightly below grade level.
- Poverty Risk Calculator, Confronting Poverty
- This is an easy interactive calculator that allows students to choose factors (race, gender, marital status, age range, and education level) and then calculate the risk of that individual to face near poverty, poverty, or extreme poverty. It is most interesting to change one or two factors and compare the results. The program creates a bar graph that allows users to compare up to six different profiles. The instructor would need to first model or demonstrate how the program works, and then students would be able to calculate their own comparisons.
- Growth in Child Poverty, 2000-2014, American Federation of Teachers
- This interactive map compares the two years, 2000 and 2014. Students can click on each state to view a side-by-side comparison. This is a tool that they could explore independently and would be a good source for comparison data in a research paper. Students at grade level or even slightly below grade level would be able to use this source.
- "How Teenagers Spend Money" by Derek Thompson
- This 2013 article in The Atlantic discusses ways teens are able to spend money on non-essential items and entertainment because they lack the financial responsibilities of their parents ("bills"). This is written for students reading at grade level, or even a bit below, and would not require instructor explanation. This would provoke an interesting class discussion to explore the ways students in the class spend their disposable income and question the wisdom and maturity of those choices. Students could also explore whether or not they should feel responsible for sharing with those who are less fortunate.
- Impossible Choices: Teens and Food Insecurity in America, Urban Institute
- This 2017 report discusses health and diet concerns of teenagers in the United States. It focuses on mostly urban areas but notes that the great majority of teens interviewed knew about food insecurity because they experienced it themselves or personally knew someone who had. It is written at a level slightly above grade 12, and it would be most effective if instructor-led. This report contains interesting but dense data, and it would be a wonderful source for a research paper because it is so current.
- "The Basic Income Experiment," Planet Money, NPR
- This podcast explores the idea of "Basic Income," where the federal government pays citizens--totally different from social assistance, unemployment benefits, or welfare programs. All citizens would get a check from the government every month to pay their bills and buy groceries, whether or not they have a job. The monthly amount would not be enough to make people rich, but it would satisfy their basic needs. The podcast describes other countries that are experimenting with Basic Income (particularly Finland) and discusses their results. It is approximately 26 minutes long and would be ideal in a classroom environment where the instructor would be able to lead a follow-up discussion of the students' responses to these ideas.
- Newsela Articles (optional)
- This is a collection of six Newsela articles that discuss poverty issues, primarily regarding wealth distribution and the separation between the "rich" and "poor" in the United States. A few of them address the current natural disasters (Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma) and the effects on citizens, depending on their income level. Most of the articles are at the 12th Grade reading level; the lowest is 7th Grade. These would best supplement the Economics modules, but only if time allows. They could also be read independently, but instructor-led discussion would be most beneficial.
- References List
- This Googledoc is a comprehensive References list in APA format, which includes all of the sources in this text set. At the bottom, it also individually lists the articles in the optional Newsela collection.