30 min lesson
This exciting role-playing lesson opens students’ eyes to all of the many people that grow, research, process, and transport food, fiber, and wood products. This lesson will inspire students about the potential of working in agriculture.
Here is a video briefly demonstrating this lesson.
Find a list of books that feature black, indigenous and people of color in agriculturally themed books. Use these books in conjunction with our Literature Circles Guide for a complete language arts activity. Using agriculture as a contextual theme in literature circles allows students to choose publications on a variety of different subjects and encourages classroom discussion on common connections between the texts. The Agricultural Reading Recommendations offer diverse perspectives on stewardship of the land and the effects on a character’s lifestyle, values and identity. Literature circles provide students the opportunity to explore texts of their interest engaging them in effective student-centered learning. This reinforces comprehension, analysis and evaluation.
180 min lesson
Garnish your space travel with sweet or spicy microgreens! Students will use the Engineering Design Process to design a growing system and device to secure the growing plants that is able to withstand the lack of gravity while growing a tasty treat for them to enjoy!
90 min lesson
Students will learn about rangelands by participating in a hands-on activity of growing their own grass to represent a beef cattle or sheep ranch.
120 min lesson
Making bread is an art and a science.
30 min lesson
Discuss changes in agriculture through time.
60 min lesson
Students will sort samples of barley based on color and hull type to create histograms. They will hypothesize and investigate the outcomes of planting barley seeds of one color and planting a random mix of different colors. Students will analyze the results of barley seeds that have been planted and harvested, constructing conclusions about trait selection. Lesson developed by Barleyworld, Oregon State University in collaboration with Johannah Withrow Robinson, Briggs Middle School barleyworld.org/main/education
15 min lesson
Students learn about the small fraction of the planet available for growing food and ways this precious area can be protected. This two-part lesson is an excellent way to introduce students to the importance of preserving soil and soil’s role in feeding 7+ billion people.
90 min lesson
This is a two-part lesson that can be done over a week. It begins by using vinegar to dissolve an egg’s shell (dissolution) without breaking the membrane that contains the egg. The shell-less eggs are used in the second part of the experiment to study osmosis, the movement of water across a membrane
120 min lesson
Students investigate the growing of food through an aquaponics system and the symbiotic existence between plants and fish.
