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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Engineering solutions in agriculture
How does modern agriculture use engineering to address soil compaction? Looking for an activity that combines robotics, coding, and engineering with a real life problem? This unit uses MakeBlock parts, Scratch programming, and modeling to help students design a solution …
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Water Windmill Challenge
How do engineers build strong support structures? This unit asks students to create a windmill structure using the Engineering Design Process. A farmer has hired your company, Wind Power Technologies, to engineer a derrick to support a …
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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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4-H aquaculture challenge
What is aquaculture? Why is it becoming a growing industry? Globally, fish consumption has nearly doubled in the last 40 years. At the same time wild fish capture has leveled off. This is due to decreasing wild stocks and high scrutiny of fishing practices. …
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Dinner and data and drones, oh my!: technology in agriculture
What technologies are used to help farmers become more productive and more sustainable? Drones (or UAVs-unmanned aerial vehicles) are taking to the skies. What are they doing up there? What other technologies are there that help growers become more productive, yet more thoughtful about …
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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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Henry Ford and George Washington Carver team up to make bio-based products
How do scientists and engineers work together to solve problems? Scientists and engineers work together to “industrialize” the use of agriculture products. Oil and protein from plants can be turned into many products. Design some new products using items from …
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Animal agriculture: engineer an egg catcher
How do engineers solve problems in agriculture? It takes 30 million eggs a day to satisfy the US consumer! Ohio is #2 in the nation in egg production and ag engineers have helped to design facilities that keep chickens safe from predators and …
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Using ozobots to simulate agriculture technology
How might we use robots to simulate agricultural technology? What role does computer science play in agriculture? The technology innovations in use in the agriculture industry have been touted as second only to those of the US military. What are these innovations? GPS guided tractors, follow-along equipment, …
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STEM in agriculture
What do students know about STEM careers in agriculture? Science, technology, engineering, and math are so much a part of agriculture and agriculture careers! In this unit, students will learn about the STEM in agriculture, discover innovations in …
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Selective Breeding and GMOs
What is genetic modification? How does it dffer from selective breeding? A lot of questions surround definitions of genetic modification. This unit models two different techniques of genetic modification and tries to help students understand the terms and the consequences …