Health Problems that Plague Communities of Color Due to Pollution
This five-day unit for teaching chemical bonding offers enhanced content that enriches and contextualizes the scientific concepts to real world issues. Tying chemistry to history, specifically Alabama history, may help students connect how the bonding of different elements creates pollutants that in turn create environmental problems and social problems. Students read a personal account of an Alabamian who lived in the legally segregated Black neighborhoods of Birmingham in the 1950s and ’60s. Additional readings and a field trip to the Historic Bethel Baptist Church in North Birmingham introduce local history about the placement of heavy industry in neighborhoods assigned to Blacks under Jim Crow segregation. The unit is flexible and can be adapted to middle and high school classrooms. As this unit can be used as supplemental material, information has been broken down for prior knowledge and knowledge learned during the unit.
Class subject:
History, Science, Chemistry, Alabama History
Alabama State Standards
Prior Knowledge
Science (2015)
Grade(s): 9 – 12
Chemistry
3) Use the periodic table as a systematic representation to predict properties of elements based on their valence electron arrangement.
- Analyze data such as physical properties to explain periodic trends of the elements, including metal/nonmetal/metalloid behavior, electrical/heat conductivity, electronegativity and electron affinity, ionization energy, and atomic-covalent/ionic radii, and how they relate to position in the periodic table.
- Develop and use models (e.g., Lewis dot, 3-D ball-and-stick, space-filling, valence-shell electron-pair repulsion [VSEPR]) to predict the type of bonding and shape of simple compounds.
- Use the periodic table as a model to derive formulas and names of ionic and covalent compounds.
Unit Focus
Science (2015)
Grade(s): 9 – 12
Chemistry
- Use the periodic table as a systematic representation to predict properties of elements based on their valence electron arrangement.
- Analyze data such as physical properties to explain periodic trends of the elements, including metal/nonmetal/metalloid behavior, electrical/heat conductivity, electronegativity and electron affinity, ionization energy, and atomic-covalent/ionic radii, and how they relate to position in the periodic table.
- Develop and use models (e.g., Lewis dot, 3-D ball-and-stick, space-filling, valence-shell electron-pair repulsion [VSEPR]) to predict the type of bonding and shape of simple compounds.
- Use the periodic table as a model to derive formulas and names of ionic and covalent compounds.
Science (2015)
Grade(s): 6
Earth and Space Science
- Analyze evidence (e.g., databases on human populations, rates of consumption of food and other natural resources) to explain how changes in human population, per capita consumption of natural resources, and other human activities (e.g., land use, resource development, water and air pollution, urbanization) affect Earth’s systems.
English Language Arts (2021)
Grade(s): 6
- Make inferences and draw logical conclusions from the content and structures of informational texts, including comparison and contrast, problem and solution, claims and evidence, cause and effect, description, and sequencing.
English Language Arts (2021)
Grade(s): 6
- Produce clear, coherent narrative, argument, and informative/explanatory writing in which the development, organization, style, and tone are relevant to task, purpose, and audience, using an appropriate command of language.
- Write informative or explanatory texts with an organized structure and a formal style, incorporating a focused point of view, a clear purpose, credible evidence, and technical word meanings.
English Language Arts (2021)
Grade(s): 12
- Compare and/or contrast the perspectives in a variety of fiction, nonfiction, informational, digital, and multimodal texts produced from diverse historical, cultural, and global viewpoints, not limited to the grade level literary focus.
English Language Arts (2021)
Grade(s): 12
- Read, analyze, and evaluate texts from science, social studies, and other academic disciplines and explain how those disciplines treat domain-specific vocabulary and content and organize information.
English Language Arts (2021)
Grade(s): 12
- Compose, edit, and revise both short and extended products in which the development, organization, and style are relevant and suitable to task, purpose, and audience, using an appropriate command of language.
- Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence, making intentional rhetorical choices to convey a specific tone or style, including intentional transitions, and providing a logical conclusion that captures the larger implications of the topic or text.
Class Time
1-2 Weeks, depending on each teacher’s class time
Learning Objectives
- Students will learn the different ways chemicals bond
- Students will learn how chemical bonding connects with the creation of pollution
- Students will identify different ways pollution is used to segregate Black Americans in cities
- Students will learn how pollution affects the environment in terms of the plants and animals living in the ecosystem, but also the people who actively interact with it
