Lesson 5.14

Fast Fashion and Where Clothes Go and the Consumer Comparison Task

Unit: Unit 5: Make It, Mend It, Wear It
Topic: 5.3 Smart Apparel Consumers (the topic's formal check runs inside Day 2)
Grade: 6 to 8 (written at grade 7; see Differentiation for the grade 6 support and grade 8 stretch)
Days: 2 class periods of 40 minutes (days 134 and 135)
Room: classroom or FACS lab; no sewing today

For this lessonHandout Fast Fashion Facts and Consumer Comparison Task Slides Fast Fashion and Where Clothes Go and the Consumer Comparison Task

Standards

NYS module line

ATPD 4. Consumer Resources and Finance d)Describe ways that personal decisions regarding apparel and textile choices include a global responsibility
ATPD 4. Consumer Resources and Finance b)Compare cost of similar apparel items when obtained from a variety of different types of vendors
ATPD 4. Consumer Resources and Finance c)Create a clothing budget
ATPD 2. Production d)Develop sustainability practices for repurposing apparel items

CTE theme line

CTE FCL 4. Buying Goods and Services c)Develop a spending and savings plan (budget) based on income and expenses
CTE SUS 2. Environmental Management e)Explain factors to consider when assessing the environmental impact of purchasing decisions for everyday goods
CTE SUS 1. Resources f)Research the personal, environmental, and financial costs and benefits of sustainability-conscious decisions to individuals, families, schools, workplaces and communities
CTE SUS 2. Environmental Management j)Examine the impacts of landfills, including toxins, leachate, and greenhouse gases, on the global community

NYS FACS learning standard

NYS FACS Learning Standard 2 (Intermediate)Key Idea: Students will know the basic principles of home and community safety. They can demonstrate the skills necessary to maintain their homes and workplaces in a safe and comfortable condition. They can provide a safe and nurturing environment for themselves and others.
Performance Indicator: Students use age-appropriate techniques to select and maintain clothing.

CDOS

CDOS Standard 3aThinking Skills

National FCS 3.0

National FCS 3.0 16.2.6Judge fibers and fabrics on sustainability.
National FCS 3.0 2.2.1Examine the part individuals and families play in current environmental trends and issues.
National FCS 3.0 2.6.2Use sound money management principles in personal and family finances.

Standard 3 (Intermediate), PI "Students understand the resources available to them, make informed decisions about the use of those resources, and know some ways to expand resources." also fits the Day 2 task, and Standard 3 (Intermediate), PI "Students are able to budget their time and money." is the indicator for the one-season budget box in Day 2 Step 2. Standard 2 is cited first because it is the only standard the state's ATPD block lists (see the crosswalk, Part E.3).

Enduring understanding and essential question

Big idea: Clothes are cheap now because somebody, somewhere, paid part of the price. Once you know how the system works, you can still shop in it, and you have four real moves.
Essential question: A sweatshirt costs $9.99 [update]. Who else paid for it, and what happens to it when I am done?

Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

(Low) Describe how fast fashion works using four features (speed, volume, price, and thin construction) and name two costs that are not on the price tag.
(Mid) Given a statistic about textile waste, identify its source, its year, and what it counts, and explain one thing the number does not tell you.
(High) For a real clothing decision of their own, create a one-page comparison of three options with price, cost per wear, a quality check, and one sustainability consideration, recommend one with a reason, and create a one-season clothing budget in which a set dollar amount has to cover what they need, naming what came off the list and why.

Vocabulary

Tier 2 (general academic): source, estimate, impact, responsibility, consideration
Tier 3 (FACS): fast fashion, textile waste, landfill, microfiber, resale, textile recycling, wiping rag, shoddy (shredded fiber), donation stream, cost per wear (review). See Vocabulary 05.md for Turkish, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Materials and setup

Handout 05.14 - Fast Fashion Facts and Consumer Comparison Task.md, one per student. Print it double-sided: the facts page and the four moves on the front, the Consumer Comparison Task page with the one-season budget box and the printed scoring checklist on the back.
One garment with a cracked printed graphic and one garment with a hole worn through at a stress point, to pass around in Step 1
The "journey of one sweatshirt" card set, seven cards per station of about seven students, cut before class: the cards and their text are printed on Handout 05.14
Slides: Slides 05.14 - Fast Fashion and Where Clothes Go and the Consumer Comparison Task
Chart paper and marker per station for the Day 1 debrief
Calculators, one per student, for Day 2
A clean copy of the Lesson 5.13 cost-per-wear formula posted on the wall
Setup notes: cut the card sets the day before. Decide before Day 1 how you want to handle the labor content; the slides state it factually in two sentences and name both sides, and the teacher notes say why. No needles today; the tins stay closed.

Pre-assessment

Day 1 do now is the pre-assessment: "What do you think happens to a shirt after you put it in a donation bin?" Take four answers and write them on the board without correcting any of them. Most classes say "someone poor gets it." Leave that on the board; Step 2 is built to complicate it. Also check the "needs more" pile from Lesson 5.13's exit cards: if cost per wear was shaky, Day 2 opens with a 90-second review before the task.

Procedure

Day 1: how the system works and where clothes go

Step	Teacher will	Students will	Time
Do now and hook	Slide 1. On the board: "You put a shirt in a donation bin. Write what you think happens to it next. One or two sentences." Two minutes. Take four answers and write them on the board, no corrections. Hook: hold up the garment with the cracked graphic. "This shirt cost eight dollars [update] and was worn four times. Somebody designed it to do exactly that. Today you find out how that works and where this shirt goes next."	Write the prediction. Four students read theirs.	4 min
1. Direct instruction: how fast fashion works	Slides 2 to 6, one feature per slide. Speed: a style can go from a drawing to a store shelf in a few weeks instead of two seasons, so a store can carry new styles constantly. Volume: many small batches of many styles instead of a few big ones, which means more total garments made. Price: low prices come from low labor cost, cheap synthetic fiber, thin fabric, single-needle seams, and few reinforcements, which students can now recognize from Lesson 5.13. Thin construction: the garment is built to survive a handful of washes, not two hundred. Then state the costs that are not on the tag, factually, two sentences each and no lecture: labor (long hours and low wages, and factory safety problems documented in several producing countries), water (growing cotton and dyeing and finishing fabric use large amounts of water and can pollute rivers where treatment is weak), and waste (unsold and discarded garments, and synthetic microfibers shed in the wash). Then say the other side out loud: cheap clothing is real help to a family with little money, and garment work is a real job in places with few of them. Say plainly: "I am not telling you where to shop. I am telling you how it works so you can decide."	Fill the four-feature chart and the three-cost chart on the handout. Handle the two passed garments and write the construction feature they can see.	9 min
2. Learning activity: the journey of one sweatshirt	Slide 7. Give each station the seven-card set out of order: worn by the owner; dropped in a donation bin or handed to a thrift shop; sorted by hand at a sorting center; sold on the thrift shop floor; baled and sold to a used-clothing dealer, often for export; cut into wiping rags for factories and shops; shredded into fiber for insulation, carpet padding, or stuffing; landfilled or burned because nothing else will take it. Task: put them in the order the sweatshirt could travel, then mark which cards can happen to the same garment and which are the end of the road. Circulate and ask one station the hard question: "Which card does a shirt with a cracked graphic and a hole in it reach first?" Debrief on chart paper: one station reports the order, another adds one correction. Correct the board's do now predictions together.	Order the cards at the station. Mark the endings. One reporter per station reads the order or the correction. Copy the corrected path onto the handout's flow line.	10 min
3. The numbers, and how to read a number	Slides 8 to 11. Put up the four numbers on the handout, one at a time, each with its source and year printed on the slide. For each, run the four questions out loud: who published it, what year is the data, what exactly does it count, and what does it not count. Model one aloud: "Seventeen million tons of textiles in the US waste stream in 2018 counts municipal solid waste in one country in one year. It does not count clothing still in closets, and it is not this year's number, so it needs checking." Name the reason for the whole step: "You will see these numbers on a poster with no source. Now you know what to ask."	On the handout's fact table, write the source and the year next to each number, then one thing each number does not tell you. Circle the number they would use if they had to convince a parent, and write why.	9 min
4. The four things a person can actually do	Slide 12. Name them and give one concrete example of each, in this order: buy less and better (one sweatshirt that survives two winters instead of three that do not), care for what you have (wash cold, wash less, air dry, close zippers, from Lesson 5.4), repair (the hem, the seam, the patch, and the button from Topic 5.2, which they can already do), pass it on (resell, hand down, donate to a place that takes it, or upcycle it, which is the project that starts tomorrow). Say the honest limit: no one of these fixes the system, and all four are inside a student's control this week.	Write one move they will actually make this month, and the day they will do it, on the handout's commitment line.	5 min
Closure	Slide 13. Closure task below.	Write the exit card. Three students read one line.	3 min

Day 1 total: 4 plus 9 plus 10 plus 9 plus 5 plus 3 = 40 minutes.

Day 2: the Consumer Comparison Task (the topic's formal check, last 20 minutes)

Step	Teacher will	Students will	Time
Do now and hook	Slide 14. On the board: "Cost per wear, one problem: a $36 jacket [update] worn 90 times. Show the division and write the unit." Two minutes. Answer on the board ($0.40 per wear). If Lesson 5.13's exit cards said cost per wear was shaky, spend the next 90 seconds on a second problem instead of the hook. Hook: "In twenty minutes you are going to make a real clothing decision on paper and hand it in. First I will show you one."	Work the problem. Write the unit.	4 min
1. Model one comparison, then set up	Slides 15 to 18. Build one comparison on the board with the class, using a real decision: "I need sneakers for gym class." Three options (a $30 discount pair, a $75 brand pair, a $18 secondhand pair [update]), each with price, an estimated number of wears and the cost per wear, one quality check from Lesson 5.13, and one sustainability consideration. Then the recommendation with a reason that names the person and the use. Show the printed scoring checklist on the slide and read all six lines out loud so nothing is a surprise. Then hand out the task page and let students choose their decision; keep a list of five default decisions on the slide for anyone who cannot think of one (a winter coat, sneakers, jeans, a sweatshirt for school, a dress or button shirt for a family event).	Watch the model and fill the sample row on the task page. Choose their own decision and write it in the top box. Check it against the checklist's six lines before starting.	9 min
2. One season, one budget	Slide 19. Name the difference out loud: a comparison picks one item, and a budget decides how much money there is before anything gets picked. Model one on the board in 90 seconds: $75 for one season [update], then the list a student would actually write (sneakers $30, two t-shirts $16, a hoodie $25, jeans $28), which totals $99. Ask the class which line comes off and make them say why that one and not another. State the rule: the amount comes first, the list comes second, and the last line is what got cut. Then send them to the budget box on the task page and circulate for the remaining two minutes. Do not let this step take a minute of the 20.	Fill the budget box: the season amount, three or four things they need with a price estimate for each, the total, whether the total fits inside the amount, and one line naming what came off the list and why that one.	4 min
3. The Consumer Comparison Task	Slide 20 (the timer and the six checklist lines stay on screen). Circulate. Answer questions about the format, not about the answer. At minute 10 say "halfway; if you have no cost per wear yet, do that next." At minute 17 say "three minutes; make sure your recommendation has a reason." Collect at the bell.	Work alone. Build the one-page comparison: three options named with the vendor type, price for each, a wear estimate and cost per wear for each with the division shown, one quality check per option, one sustainability consideration, and a recommendation with a reason tied to the buyer and the use. Self-check against the printed checklist, then hand it in.	20 min
Closure	Inside the last 3 minutes of Step 3, on the back of the task page.	Write the closure line and hand in.	3 min

Day 2 total: 4 plus 9 plus 4 plus 20 plus 3 = 40 minutes. The 20-minute task is the topic's formal check and is scored on the printed checklist out of 10 points in the topic assessments category.

Questions to ask

Monitor understanding:

Name the four features of fast fashion. Which one can you see on this shirt in your hand?
Who published that number, and what year is the data?
Which card is the end of the road for a garment, and which cards can come before it?
What is your cost per wear on option 2? Show me the division.

Deepen learning (why and how, tied to their lives):

Cheap clothing helps a family that does not have money. Pollution and low wages hurt people too. How do you hold both of those at the same time when you are standing in the store?
Your donation goes to a sorting center and most of it is resold or shredded, not handed to a neighbor. Does that change whether you donate? Why or why not?
Of the four moves, which one is the cheapest for a middle school student to actually do, and which one is hardest? Say why.
You now know how to repair a hem, a seam, a patch, and a button. Does that change what "I can't wear this anymore" means?
Whose responsibility is textile waste: the shopper, the brand, or the government? Defend one answer for thirty seconds.

Check for understanding

Day 1, during Step 3: cold call four students with one question each, "Who published it?" "What year?" "What does it count?" "What does it not count?" A student who can answer any three of the four has the skill. During Step 2, listen at each station for the word "sorted"; a station that puts the donation bin straight to a neighbor has not read the cards.

Day 2, during Step 1: thumbs on the sample row. Any student who cannot fill the sample row gets the reduced task (two options instead of three, named on the handout) before the 20 minutes start, not halfway through.

Closure (Time: 3 min each day)

Day 1, 3-2-1 exit card: 3 features of fast fashion, 2 places a donated sweatshirt can end up, 1 move from the four that you will make this month and when. Three students read one line. Sort into "got it" and "needs more." A "needs more" pile with more than a third of the class means Day 2's model gets five minutes instead of three, taken out of the choose-your-own time and not out of the 20-minute task.

Day 2, one line on the back of the task page: "The hardest part of this comparison was ___, because ___." These lines tell you what the Upcycle Challenge briefing needs to repeat on day 136.

Differentiation and supports

ELL: the journey cards each have a picture (a bin, a sorting table, a thrift rack, a bale, a stack of rags, a roll of insulation, a landfill); the four moves are four icons on the wall; the task page has sentence frames, "I recommend option ___ because ___," "Option ___ costs $___ per wear," "One sustainability reason is ___"; the fact table may be completed in the home language; the word bank carries the Turkish, Portuguese, and Spanish words for waste, water, repair, donate, and price, per Vocabulary 05.md.
IEP and 504 (general): the reduced task is two options instead of three and is scored on the same six lines with the reduction noted on the checklist; the task may be dictated to the teacher or an aide and written by them; extended time into the first ten minutes of Lesson 5.15 with the checklist attached; the cost-per-wear rows come with the division frames already drawn; a calculator for everyone; a printed copy of the Lesson 5.13 quality-check list at every seat so no factor has to be recalled from memory.
Grade 6 support: the task gives the three options (the sneaker set from the model, with the prices) so the student compares given options rather than researching their own, and the wear estimates are provided. The sustainability consideration may be chosen from a printed list of five. On the budget box, the season amount is given as $75 and two of the four need lines are already written in, so the student's work is the price estimates, the total, and the cut.
Grade 8 stretch: add a fourth option that is "repair or upcycle what I already own" and compute its cost per wear (often the cost of a spool of thread divided across many wears), then answer one more question on the back: "Which of your four options would you defend to somebody who says sustainability is too expensive, and what is your one number?" Also: find and cite one number from a named source with its year, and say one thing it does not count. On the budget box, add a second season at the same dollar amount and say what carries over from the first season, so the budget covers six months instead of three.
UDL checkpoint used: multiple means of engagement (the student picks the clothing decision that is actually theirs) and multiple means of action and expression (the comparison may be a table, a labeled drawing of the three options, or dictated, and all three are scored on the same six lines).
No-machine alternative: no sewing machine and no needle are used in this lesson. If the passed garments are not available, the slide photos carry Step 1 and the teacher's own clothing supplies one construction example.

Assessment

Objective	Standards met	Learning task	Assessment (formative or summative; tool)
1. Describe how fast fashion works and name two costs not on the tag	ATPD 4. d); SUS 2. e); National FCS 16.2.6	The four-feature and three-cost charts, Day 1 Step 1	Formative; handout checked for four features and two costs with a reason
2. Identify a statistic's source, year, and what it counts	SUS 1. f); SUS 2. j); CDOS 3a Thinking Skills; National FCS 2.2.1	The fact table, Day 1 Step 3	Formative; four rows checked for source and year plus one limit each; cold call during Step 3
3. Create a three-option comparison for a real decision, recommend one, and build a one-season clothing budget	ATPD 4. b), 4. c), 4. d); ATPD 2. d); SUS 2. e); FCL 4. c); Std 2 PI C; Std 3 PI C; National FCS 16.2.6, 2.6.2	Consumer Comparison Task, Day 2 Step 3; the one-season budget box, Day 2 Step 2	Summative; the printed scoring checklist on `Handout 05.14`, 10 points, topic assessments category. The budget box is separate and is checked complete, partial, or missing for daily work, not inside the 10 points

The Consumer Comparison Task is the formal check for Topic 5.3. One retake after a review, best score counts, per the grading plan. The Unit 5 Test has one sustainability item and one cost-per-wear item drawn from these two days.

Homework

None required. Optional, and it feeds the project that starts tomorrow: look for one textile item at home that nobody uses anymore, a t-shirt, a towel, a pillowcase, a sweater with a hole, a pair of jeans that do not fit. Ask whoever owns it whether you could bring it to class. Do not bring it yet. Lesson 5.15 sends home the permission note.

Connections

Science: the water and landfill content is the same material the grade 7 or 8 science teacher covers under human impact on the environment; a shared vocabulary list keeps the two consistent, and science can supply the microfiber content. Social studies: global trade and the used-clothing export trade. English: reading a statistic for source and bias is a nonfiction reading standard, and the fact table is a short version of it. Community: a local clothing donation program or a textile recycling drop-off, to say what they actually do with what arrives. [Sal: if there is a drop-off bin at the school or a nearby store, use that one; students have walked past it.]

Sources

NYS Middle Level CTE FACS Content Module 03, Apparel and Textile Production and Design (nyctecenter.org, June 2018), lines 2. d), 4. b), 4. c), 4. d). Copy in 02 Standards/NYS Module PDFs/.
NYS Middle Level CTE Theme Module, Financial and Consumer Literacy, line 4. c). Same folder. This is the theme line the crosswalk pairs with ATPD 4. c), and it is the budget box on Day 2.
NYS Middle Level CTE Theme Module, Sustainability, lines 1. f), 2. e), 2. j). Same folder. The Sustainability module's own Family and Consumer Sciences illustrative activity is a product lifecycle study ending in a recycle, upcycle, or repurposing project, which is exactly Topic 5.4.
NYS Learning Standards for Health, Physical Education, and Family and Consumer Sciences (1996), Standard 2, Intermediate, FACS strand. Wording per 02 Standards/STANDARDS SOURCES - web research.md, section 2. [Sal: confirm against the NYSED PDF.]
National Standards for Family and Consumer Sciences Education 3.0 (LEAD FCS Education, 2018), competencies 16.2.6, 2.2.1, and 2.6.2, per 02 Standards/STANDARDS SOURCES - web research.md, sections 4.2 and 4.16.
Textile waste figures: US Environmental Protection Agency, Facts and Figures about Materials, Waste and Recycling, textiles, 2018 data (published 2020), https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/textiles-material-specific-data. [Sal: check for a newer data year before printing the handout; the handout prints the year next to the number for exactly this reason.]
Water-use estimate for one pair of jeans and the decline in the number of times a garment is worn: both are widely cited estimates whose sources and methods differ. The handout prints them with the source and a check note rather than as settled facts. [Sal: verify each against the original publication before the numbers go on the website.]
03 Course Design/03 Grading Plan.md (topic assessment weight and retake rule).

Teacher notes

The labor content is two sentences on one slide, stated as fact, with the other side named in the same breath. That is deliberate. A middle school class that feels lectured stops listening, and a class that hears only one side learns to distrust the teacher. The sentence that keeps it working is "I am not telling you where to shop."
A student will say their family can only afford the cheap store. Never let that sit. The answer, out loud: "That is most families, including plenty of mine. That is why the four moves are care, repair, pass it on, and buy better when you can, and not 'spend more.'"
Common mistake in Step 3: students write the number and skip the year. Make the year a separate blank on the handout so skipping it is visible.
If Step 2 runs long, drop the "which cards can happen to the same garment" half and keep the ordering. The ordering is what corrects the do now.
The 20 minutes on Day 2 are protected. Do not let Step 1 or Step 2 eat them. If the model runs long, cut the choose-your-own list and assign the sneaker decision to everyone. Step 1 is nine minutes now, not thirteen, because the budget box took four. The part of Step 1 to compress is the reading of the six checklist lines: point at them on the slide and read lines 3 and 6 out loud, since those are where the points are lost.
The budget box in Step 2 is the only place in this unit where a student builds a clothing budget, so it is not optional. It is four minutes and it is the difference between comparing prices and managing money. Keep the modeled total over the modeled amount on purpose. A budget that already fits teaches nothing.
Print the scoring checklist on the same page as the task. Students who can see the six lines while they work score about a point higher, and that is the point of a checklist.
[Sal: your $40 family grocery project and your ClassroomStreet budget both taught that a good decision has a number attached to it. Say that here. The Consumer Comparison Task is the same move in a different aisle.]
Save three strong task pages, names removed, as exemplars for next year and for the website's Unit 5 page.