(This is the lessons plan for Crystal Boulton-Scott and Joseph Scott‘s curriculum, “Good Fire.”)
“Inquiry By Design Blueprint”
Essential Question:
How do Native American people use fire as a tool to improve environmental health?
Standards This Unit Meets:
See the document: “02 Good Fire Standards Addressed.”
Staging the Question:
“Indigenous people have used fire as a tool to tend oaks and other First Foods plants since time immemorial. Colonial fire suppression has disrupted this process, resulting in compromised landscapes, compromised health, and an increased vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.”
Preparing to Teach:
Prepare for the lesson by reading background information found in the article, “Indigenous Uses, Management, and Restoration of Oaks of the Far Western United States.” (Document 03: Good Fire Traditional Acorn Use)
Preparing to Learn:
Prepare learners by completing the “Native American Forest Practices Challenge” lesson (Document 04: Good Fire NA Forest Practices Challenge).
Entry Question #1
What is fire, and what does it do?
Formative Performance Task:
Make fire and describe its properties.
Themes:
Fire is neither inherently good, nor inherently bad.
Wildfire and Prescribed Fire are very different.
Prescribed fire is good fire that is used responsibly and carefully.
Prescribed fire and its impacts are influenced by limiting factors: fuel, catalyst (oxygen), and heat.
Procedures:
Use the “Good Fire Triangle Lesson” to explore the fundamentals of fire and heat transfer.
Share “Wildfire/Prescribed Fire” video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQjx5lAWAWM) and explain the difference between wildfire and prescribed fire.
Use the “Good Fire Forming a Hypothesis Worksheet” as a guide to design and to conduct a leaf burning experiment.
Entry Question #2
How does good fire impact acorn production and the resulting health and well-being of Native American people who have traditionally relied on oak trees for food?
Formative Performance Task:
Demonstrate understanding of how prescribed fire enhances oak tree health and acorn production by creating a “map” of interrelated processes, organisms, and systems.
Themes:
Human beings are “fire dependent.”
Human beings and fire are both natural features of the landscape.
There are traditions and cultural norms that guide the use of fire.
Fire behavior in oak leaves is influenced by a variety of factors related to leaf composition, surface area, heat source, moisture, and temperature.
Fire impacts living oak tree and acorn production through heat application, chemical reactions and soil health, and overall environmental health.
Procedures:
Instructor: Read “Keepers of the Oaks” and “Indigenous Uses of Oaks” for an orientation to the impacts of cultural fire on acorn production in Northern California.
You will need to use these references to develop content and content knowledge assessment in the context of local and state Native American content standards and using differentiated instruction strategies.
Consult the outcomes of learner experiments from Entry Question #1. Discuss how heat and flame affect things like pests, fuel loads, soil composition and pH, physical access, and bark thickness.
Create fire and oak ecology webs illustrating connections between these factors (Heat kills bugs, Flame clears grasses and sticks, Ashes alter soil pH, etc.).
Discuss how these impacts can affect food (acorn) production. Guide learner outcomes using information from “Keepers of the Oaks” and “Indigenous Uses of Oaks”.
Entry Question #3
How can prescribed fire and indigenous cultural fire practices improve planet health?
Formative Performance Task:
Illustrate changes over time in the use of prescribed fire, illustrate the consequences of these changes, and illustrate how prescribed fire improves the health of the planet.
Themes:
Indigenous cultural burning is prescribed burning.
Prescribed burning reduces the likelihood of catastrophic wildfires.
Catastrophic wildfires are both a symptom of and a contributor to global climate change.
Procedures:
Guided Reading of “Controlled fires could actually save forests and fight climate change”.
Students identify key terminology and vocabulary related to prescribed fire and climate change.
Students conduct independent research on the causes of global climate change and construct an illustrated timeline that demonstrates an understanding of the following concepts: Time Immemorial, Industrial Revolution, Colonization, First Contact, Global Temperature Rise, Cultural Practices Revitalization, and Continuity.
Students may work in groups to focus on a specific concept segment and generate a class-constructed timeline.
Enduring Understanding:
The responsible use of “Good Fire” (Prescribed Fire) is essential to long-term ecological health and wellbeing.
Summative Performance Task: “Good Fire PR”
Students will reflect on their learning and design a campaign to raise public awareness of the role that prescribed fire/good fire plays in the health and wellbeing of indigenous people and the larger world. This campaign will share the path of learning that the students have traveled and provide them the opportunity to share insights and new knowledge about prescribed fire, fire ecology, and the role good fire can play in addressing the effects of global climate change.
Ideas to consider:
-
- Write a short play and perform it.
- Record a Public Service Announcement.
- Create a newscast.
- Make a slideshow or persuasive PowerPoint presentation.
- Write a letter to the editor of a newspaper or write to a state representative.
- Make a TikTok video.
Supplemental Hands-on Activity:
Processing Acorns
Procedures:
Consult “Acorn Processing” and use the information to make acorn flour.
Additional Ideas for consideration:
Create or modify a recipe to include acorn flour.
Reach out to local tribes for permission to gather acorns and learn more about them.
Collaborate to provide nutritious acorn flour to local tribal people.
Cultivate oak trees from seed. Plant them and/or gift them.