Name: ____________________________________ Date: ______________ Period: ______

Everything in this handout is made up for class. The neighborhood is not a real place. The prices are written to look like a real Long Island supermarket and a real corner store. Nobody is being described here.

[Sal: update the supermarket column from this week's circular and the convenience column from whatever store is near the school. Students believe the numbers more when they recognize them.]

Part 1. The two words

Food insecurity means _____________________________________________________

Food desert means ________________________________________________________

The four things that create a food desert

Part 2. The neighborhood

Maple Park. About 4,000 people live in the twelve blocks below. There is one full supermarket, three convenience stores, one bus line, and no sidewalk on Route 9 between Elm and the supermarket.

Scale: 1 inch on this map = 0.4 miles. One block = about 0.1 miles.

          ROUTE 9  (no sidewalk between Elm and the store)
  =======================================================================
                                                          [ SUPERMARKET ]
                                                           Fresh Foods
                                                           open 7 to 9
  OAK STREET
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   [HOME A]        [C-STORE 1]
                    Quick Stop
                    open 6 to 11
  ELM STREET
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
                          [C-STORE 2]              [HOME B]
                           Corner Mart
                           open 24 hours
  PINE STREET
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   [HOME C]                          [C-STORE 3]
   (no car)                           Gas and Go
                                      open 5 to 12
  BIRCH STREET
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
      *  BUS STOP (route 12, one bus every hour, 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.)
         The bus goes to the supermarket. The ride is 9 minutes.

Measure it

Use a ruler and the scale. Measure straight-line distance, then add 20 percent for turns.

Highlight the walking route from Home C to the supermarket. How many blocks is it? ______

Which home has the hardest trip to the supermarket? ______

Name two reasons: ___________________________________________________________

What would make it easier? Name one change to the neighborhood, not to the family.

Part 3. Twenty dollars, two stores

You are shopping for one dinner for a family of four. You have $20. Build a cart at each store.

Fresh Foods Supermarket (1.4 miles from Home C)

Supermarket cart total: $__________

What is the dinner? _________________________________________________________

Does it feed four? yes / no

Corner Mart (0.2 miles from Home C, open 24 hours)

Corner Mart cart total: $__________

What is the dinner? _________________________________________________________

Does it feed four? yes / no

The comparison

The difference in dollars: the supermarket cart bought ____________ pounds of food for $20 and the Corner Mart cart bought ____________ pounds for $20.

The difference in food: in one sentence, what does the supermarket family eat that the Corner Mart family does not?

The item that was not available at all at Corner Mart: ____________________

Part 4. Five responses. Pick two.

My top two, with evidence from the map or the price lists:

Choice 1: ______________________ Evidence: ____________________________________

Choice 2: ______________________ Evidence: ____________________________________

Exit card

A food desert is ______________________________________________________, and the thing that would help the most is ______________________ because ___________________________________________________________________________.

Teacher key

Part 1: Food insecurity is not having reliable access to enough affordable food. A food desert is a neighborhood where reaching a full grocery store is hard because of distance, transportation, or both. Accept student wording that includes distance or transportation for the second one. Do not accept "a place with no food," which is the most common wrong answer and the reason the do now asks for the guess first.

Part 2 distances, measured from the map as drawn: Home A to the supermarket, about 1.1 miles; Home B, about 0.7 miles; Home C, about 1.4 miles. Nearest convenience store: Home A to Quick Stop about 0.3 miles, Home B to Corner Mart about 0.4 miles, Home C to Corner Mart about 0.2 miles. [Sal: these depend on how the map prints. Measure your own printed copy once and write the answers in, or tell students any answer within a tenth of a mile of the class average is fine. The exact number is not the point; the ratio is.]

Home C has the hardest trip. Reasons: it is the farthest, the household has no car, the bus runs once an hour so a round trip eats most of an afternoon, there is no sidewalk on part of the route, and frozen or refrigerated food will not survive the wait at the stop.

What would make it easier, good answers: a bus every twenty minutes, a stop closer to the supermarket door, a sidewalk on Route 9, a mobile market on Pine Street, a grocery delivery that accepts SNAP, a small grocery in the empty storefront. Reject "the family should get a car," and use it to make the point that the causes are about the neighborhood, not the household.

Part 3, a strong supermarket cart under $20: chicken thighs $4.98, rice $2.29, carrots $1.99, broccoli $1.99, potatoes $3.99, bananas $0.69, eggs $3.49 equals $19.42, which is a real dinner with leftovers and breakfast the next day. Many combinations work.

Part 3, a Corner Mart cart under $20: pasta $2.49, pasta sauce $3.49, canned corn $1.79, sliced cheese $2.99, white bread $3.49, milk quart $2.79 equals $17.04. It feeds four once, with no vegetables beyond a can of corn and no fresh anything.

The item not available at all: fresh vegetables and fresh meat. Accept either.

The difference: the supermarket cart buys roughly two to three times the food weight and includes fresh produce and a real protein. That is the number and the sentence to hold on to.

Part 4: there is no single right pair. Full credit for any two picks defended with evidence from the map or the price lists. The strongest defenses in this neighborhood usually name the mobile market (because distance and transportation are the binding problems and a mobile market moves the store to the people) and school meals (because they reach children every weekday with no trip required). A pantry helps but is open one day a week. SNAP helps with price but not with distance. A garden helps in summer only. Any of those, argued on the evidence, earns full credit.

Handling note: read Part 3 and the exit cards before handing anything back. If a student answer reveals something about their own household, that is a private conversation with the counselor's help, not a comment in the margin. See the three rules at the top of Lesson 6.4.

Scoring: daily work, complete, partial, or missing. Look for six distances measured with the scale, both carts totaled at or under $20, and two responses each with one piece of evidence.