Curriculum
Explore, download and share these proven real-world educational resources to help bring science and agriculture to life in your classroom. Relevant and engaging, you’ll find useful, easy-to-implement lesson plans and activities.
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Healthy soils
What makes soil healthy? What methods might farmers use to maintain healthy soil? “Soil” doesn’t just mean “dirt.” It is a mixture of minerals like rocks and clay, organic material like dead leaves, living organisms like worms, microbes, and insects, and even air and water. There …
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Water quality and human impacts
Why is water quality important? How is water quality measured? The US EPA has set water quality standards in accordance with the Clean Water Act: Water quality standards are important because they help to protect and restore the quality of the Nation's surface …
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Making biodiesel from soybeans
How might we make and use renewable fuel? Make biodiesel and create a scale model of an anaerobic digester, while investigating bioenergy and how it is produced.
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AFNR natural resources
How do we impact natural resources by our activities? This unit helps meet some of the AFNR curriculum standards for natural resources. Students will learn how to test texture and other physical characteristics of soil, conduct water quality tests, …
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Photoperiod: the floral initiator
What drives plants to flower and reproduce? In this lesson students will plant and care for soybeans under one of three different photoperiod regimes: First month: 16 hours; Second month: 14 hours; third month: 12 hours (control) 16 hours for …
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Nitrogen fixation and legumes: say what?
How do legumes fix nitrogen? If the atmosphere is about 80% Nitrogen (N2), but plants cannot use that form, how do they get nitrogen? In this unit, students plant and care for soybeans under one of five different …
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AFNR plant systems
How do we develop and manage plant systems? Each plant is classified according to broad categories based on characteristics they share. New DNA technology has allowed us to be more specific in determining the “relatives” of plants. This …
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AFNR biotechnology
What are the current issues in biotechnology? There is a lot of resistance to genetic modification and the use of genetically modified crops. What is the science? This unit helps to provide some background in cell function and DNA properties, …
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Oh soy good! Milk types and food security
How might soymilk, and other types of milk, help ensure food security? Investigate various milk sources and their composition through core disciplines of Science, Math, Social Studies and Language Arts to discover the availability of milk types within multiple cultures …
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Managing nutrient and pesticide needs in agriculture
Why do farmers spend time and money to apply chemicals to their fields? In this threaded PBL*, (an effort to integrate agricultural understandings into the normal sequence of an Environmental Science classroom) students will conduct several “close reads” (reading for …
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Where does our food come from, anyway? Sustainable ag systems
How do growers’ decisions affect the sustainability of agricultural systems? Understand and appreciate food producers through this case study and determine what decisions must be made on a yearly, monthly, or daily basis to maintain an environmental system that will continue …
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Moving genes: intro to genetic engineering
How do we solve the problems created by 9 billion people? How will we feed 9 billion on about the same amount of land? An introduction to genetic engineering through hands-on and modeling activities that illustrate concepts, which will scaffold student understanding for lab activities to follow, especially focused on …