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Chilean Sea Bass Controversy - Social Studies and Language Arts for grades 3-5

The purpose of this activity is for students to learn about the issues involved in the Chilean sea bass controversy.


1. Ask students what their absolute favorite food is and record students' answers on a piece of paper. Save the piece of paper to use at the end of the lesson.


2. Share with your students Dan Grossman's December 29th journal entry, in which he talks about the Chilean sea bass.


3. Ask students to read the material from these sources and collect and share three pieces of information about the sea bass controversy. You may choose to send students to these sites, or make print copies of the information to distribute to your students.
4. Ask students to read and compare these two articles. The article on the Metro Active Web site discusses how some restaurants are removing Chilean sea bass from their menus to help save the species, while the article from the Center for Consumer Freedom Web site questions the motives behind the controversy.
5. After students have read and discussed the two differing viewpoints offered in the articles, divide the class into small groups. Tell the groups that they are going to role-play a scenario in which they will try to convince a restaurateur to take Chilean sea bass off of their menu. Ask students to assign group members the roles of a restaurateur, someone who is trying to convince them not to serve the fish and someone who is trying to sell them the fish. Provide time for students to perform their skits for the entire class.


6. Refer back to the students' list of favorite foods. Ask students to imagine that, for very compelling reasons, people are being asked not to eat that particular food. Ask students if they would give up eating their all-time favorite food, and discuss their reasons.
Learning Log: Tell students to write about the Chilean sea bass controversy in their Antarctica Learning Log.