At Home on the Range (Grades 6-8)
Students investigate rangelands by growing their own grass to represent a beef or sheep ranch.
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Hen House Engineering (Grades 6-8)
Students will use the Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning model to evaluate styles of housing used for hens that lay eggs. Using critical thinking skills, students will compare housing styles, determine which system meets their animal welfare standards, and engineer their own hen house model to meet the needs of laying hens. This lesson covers a socioscientific issue and aims to provide students with tools to evaluate science within the context of social and economic points of view.
Source Sleuth: Investigating Credible Sources About Beef
Students will discover why it is important to use credible sources, learn strategies for identifying credible sources, identify primary sources of information, and practice citing sources.
The Remarkable Ruminant
In this lesson, students will follow the farm to fork process of producing beef, learn how cattle and other ruminants convert grass into nutrient-rich foods such as milk and meat, discover ways cattle recycle food waste, and identify careers in the beef cattle industry.
Taming the Wild Aurochs
Students will read about and research the domestication of animals to better understand why and how they are raised on a farm. They will create a timeline of animal domestication.
Sheep See, Sheep Do (Grades 6-8)
Students explore the difference between inherited and acquired traits and understand why knowledge of inherited and acquired traits is important to agriculture. Activities in this lesson include trait sorting, two video clips, a PTC taste test, and student presentations.
Surrounded by Plants
Students identify the importance of plants to human life by surveying their home and neighborhood for plant products used for medicine, aesthetics, fuel products, fiber, and food.
Apples and the Science of Genetic Selection
Students will distinguish between natural and artificial selection and use a student-centered learning activity to see how science and genetics have been used to artificially select apples for specific traits like color, texture, taste, and crispness.
Plant Nutrient Deficiencies (Grades 9-12)
Students will recognize that plants, like people, require essential nutrients to be present in the right amounts in order to be healthy, use reference materials to diagnose plant nutrient deficiencies, define fertilizer as a type of “food” for plants, and appreciate that fertilizers are used to replenish nutrients in agricultural soils.
Know Your Nitrogen
In this lesson, students will test for plant-available soil nitrogen and learn how farmers use this test to precisely match fertilizer application to meet crop needs and reduce the amount of nitrogen left in the soil.
What's Your pH?
In this lesson students will measure the pH of a soil sample and learn how pH affects the availability of nutrient uptake by plants. Students will determine if and how their soil pH should be modified through the application of soil amendments.
One in a Million
In this lesson, students will learn about solutes and solvents and will use serial dilution while investigating parts per million—a term used to describe the nutrient concentration of a fertilizer solution.