Project Summaries
2004 Agriculture in the Classroom Excellence (ACE) Awards

Following are final reports of the projects funded by USDA and the National Agriculture in the Classroom Consortium through the AITC Excellence (ACE) grant program for the year 2004. The award date for all grantees was November 5, 2004. Project duration ranged from 12-24 months and is noted in each state’s summary.

State: Louisiana
Project Title: Farm Camp
Award Amount: $7,500
Project Duration: 12 months
Project Completed
Summary:
To educate students and teachers about the source of their food and fiber, as well as career options in agriculture, Louisiana Ag in the Classroom (AITC) and Farm Bureau developed the Farm Camp. This four-day residential camp hosted students from across Louisiana between the ages of 10 and 12 years old, or 4th through 6th graders.

Farm Camp used each of its four days to address different sectors of the agriculture industry: plant and animal sciences, row crops, biotechnology and meteorology. Each component was presented by an LSU research team made up of AgCenter, 4-H and FFA personnel, and included hands-on learning activities for students and teachers. Students and teachers learned about cloning and gene-splitting at LSU’s world-renowned biotechnology lab, milked cows, sheared sheep and studied meteorology and climatology from NWA- and AMS-certified meteorologists.  These groups also learned hands-on lessons produced by Farm Bureau’s Ag in the Classroom (AITC) program. All AITC activities and lessons were benchmarked to the Louisiana Department of Education standards, and were the basis of pre- and post-camp assessment tests.

Exposure to the different areas of agriculture allowed teachers and students to see how agriculture is part of their everyday lives. Students also learned about the variety of agricultural careers they might consider in the future.  Teachers participated in all lectures, experiments and demonstrations, but they also took part in a separate AITC training workshop. Following camp, teacher were provided with free materials and lesson plans—valued at more than $500—to use in their classrooms.

State: Maine
Project Title: Finding the Food and Clothing Around You, An Agriculture Resource Guide
Award Amount: $7,000
Project Duration: 24 months
Project Completed
Summary:
The purpose of this project was to enhance educator development and education and instructional delivery strategies by developing a database and resource directory of farmers. The directory lists farm businesses that were willing to invite teachers and students to their farms. The directory also indicates those businesspeople willing to go to classrooms to make agriculture presentations.

The database is unique in that each farm in the database is aligned with lessons from the Project Food, Land and People Curriculum; the Wild Blueberry Curriculum; and any other curriculum units teachers might use. Doing so will help teachers meet the Maine State Standards while on each trip or visit. Information includes which activities the farm can provide, the hours of availability, cost, age level, and other information needed by teachers in order to incorporate a farm visit into their curriculum or learning standard taught.

The directory has an introductory section on how to use the directory and a section on how a farmer integrates math, science, literature and social sciences into his/her day-to-day business. This exemplifies to teachers the value of hands-on trips in their core curriculum. The resource directory is statewide and includes aquaculture operations and other natural resource businesses.

State: Maryland
Project Title: Taking Ag in the Classroom to the City
Award Amount: $7,000
Project Duration: 12 months
Project Completed
Summary:
The Maryland Agriculture Education Foundation developed new hands-on activities for the Maryland Agriculture Showcase. This Showcase is a premier traveling exhibit which includes formative exhibits on fruits and vegetables, soils, nursery and landscape, dairy, the farmer and his/her many roles, careers, soybeans, beef cattle, hogs, sheep, corn, horses, and chickens. Participation with this exhibit was improved through reaching a larger, non-agricultural audience.

The following activities were designed to attract attention and provide a simple, memorable, agricultural message:

• Design and stamp an agricultural bookmark
• Make an animal puppet
• Make a Garden Greenie—planting turf grass in a nylon stocking
• Butter making
• A Vine Through Time—during fall months, children make a book that depicts the life cycle of a pumpki

State: Massachusetts
Project Title: Bringing Green Genes-"My DNA" to the Classroom and Farm
Award Amount: $6,000
Project Duration: 20 months
Project Completed
Summary:
Project Green Genes—"My DNA" was a collaborative project of UMASS Extension Service and Massachusetts Agriculture in the Classroom (MAC). This project provided hands-on activities exploring genetics and DNA on a middle school level. This material is for educators who have little or no science background—both classroom educators and educators in after-school programs. Specifically, the funding assisted in development of the second and third units of this curriculum, and helped train teachers and youth educators. The curriculum and opportunity for training were introduced to educators in Massachusetts through the MAC newsletter.

State: Minnesota
Project Title: Food for Thought; A Geography of Minnesota Agriculture
Award Amount: $7,500
Project Duration: 18 months
Project Completed
Summary:
This grant supported the development and marketing of a new, second edition of the popular Food for Thought mapping curriculum first introduced to Minnesota teachers back in 1998. In the ensuing four years, Minnesota Agriculture in the Classroom (M-AITC) did several reprints and ultimately distributed (all by direct request from teachers)some 70,000 color, two sided 11x17 student desk maps and 3,000 companion teacher guides for use with mostly grads 4-6-8 and 10 geography classes. Because the product was directly correlated to the then new Student Profile of Learning graduation standards (est.1997), the Food for Thought curriculum was a popular and useful classroom supplement for many teachers. The student desk map was the key to its success.....a teacher review committee we assembled had demanded printed, colorful hard copy maps so each student could “own” them and this proved to be very true. We were providing a product that nobody, not even the publishers could provide the classroom teachers. And it was free to them!

Our challenge was to bring Food for Thought “back to life” in the Minnesota classroom. This geography curriculum has been widely accepted among all the various user markets appropriate for M-AITC (all levels of educators, ag groups, home schools, extension, state agencies, etc.). We have distributed about 35,000 student desk maps and 1,500 teacher guides on a request basis only. This product will have another two-year shelf-life in terms of orders and classroom use.

Our primary target for Food for Thought was geography teachers. We received many orders from grades 4-10 teachers on Minnesota geography, but also many from either district curriculum or social studies specialists. Their intent was to infuse Food for Thought into teacher in-service and/or earmark the use for a particular grade level in their entire district (for example, ninth grade). We have received many orders from city and suburban school districts.

Feedback indicates it was important to provide teachers with a colorful map that could be given to each student. Teachers liked the current agriculture information and product quality, and we gained much in acceptance with our alignment to the new geography standards.

State: North Carolina
Project Title: North Carolina Agriculture: An Accurate Portrayal
Award Amount: $7,000
Project Duration: 24 months
Project Completed
Summary:
The grant funds provided by ACE enabled NC AITC to continue to provide teachers with workshops to further their certification and understanding of the state's number one employer—agriculture. With the current focus in North Carolina on reading and writing, the workshops provided a source for teachers to receive high quality, no cost instruction to better prepare their students to learn about the sources of their food and fiber as they learn those basic skills. With AITC ACE grant, NC AITC (1) developed and delivered high-quality reading workshops and (2) provided book grants to qualifying teachers.

State: Ohio
Project Title: Enabling Local Watershed Education
Award Amount: $7,500
Project Duration: 23 months
Project Completed
Summary:
Ohio Farm Bureau Federation's (OFBF) Agriculture in the Classroom (AITC) program continues to partner with the USDA Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCD) in Ohio to help provide mini grants for watershed education projects. Based on the interest and participation in the first year that mini grants were offered (2003-2004), a second round of mini grants was made available to SWCD education specialists in 2004-2005.

The mini grants were used to prepare classroom science teachers to help students research local watershed issues that included a discussion of agriculture conservation practices. The local SWCD education specialists followed up with participant classroom teachers to facilitate the use of the new resources and to offer assistance for field trip opportunities for students.

State: Oklahoma
Project Title: Ag in the Classroom After School
Award Amount: $5,500
Project Duration: 22 months
Scheduled Completed
Summary:
The purpose of this project was to develop resources, which would help Oklahoma schoolchildren understand the connection between local producers of food and their good health. Ag in the Classroom After School supported efforts by the Oklahoma 4-H Program's After School Impact Team by providing a curriculum booklet with 25 activities, which would encourage good food choices, and physical activity including outdoor gardening activities. It also helped make students aware of the fruits and vegetables produced locally. The program made sub grants available for use by after school programs in the local schools which helped pay for materials to conduct the activities included in the Ag in the Classroom After School Curriculum, helped support school gardening efforts, and helped pay for field trips to local food production sites, grocery stores and farmers' markets.

State: Oregon
Project Title: Get Oregonized—4th Grade Oregon Agriculture and History
Award Amount: $7,000
Project Duration: 18 months
Project Completed
Summary:
The Oregon Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation updated a student textbook, Get Oregonized, written for 4th grade students about Oregon History. (The textbook and Teacher's Guide were printed twenty years ago.) The Oregon Department of Education mandates that all 4th grade students learn about Oregon history. This textbook focuses on agriculture, timber and water. Each chapter in the textbook and Teacher's Guide was written by an Oregon teacher with expertise in that area.

This grant provided the funds for updating the Teacher's Guide, aligning each chapter to the Oregon Educational Benchmark Standards, printing the Teacher's Guide, preparing and conducting teacher training and posting information on our AITC Website. The Teacher's Guide provides detailed background information on each lesson, enabling the teacher to present the material without previous knowledge or additional research.

A total of 300 Teacher’s Guides and 4,000 Get Oregonized student books were printed. Copies have been sold to public, private, charter and home schools and Oregon State University Extension 4-H. The use of these materials will help meet the overall goal of AITC to increase the agricultural literacy of youth in Oregon.

State: South Carolina
Project Title: AITC High School Lessons and Teaching Strategies
Award Amount: $7,500
Project Duration: 12 months
Project Completed
Summary:
South Carolina Agriculture in the Classroom (SC AITC) used the 2004 Agriculture in the Classroom Enrichment Grant to implement SC AITC high school lesson plans and teaching strategies in South Carolina low performing high schools with a 5%-10% annual drop out rate.

Professional development workshops, which focused on agricultural literacy, career awareness, and career development, were conducted for teachers in low performing high schools.

Pre- and post-tests based on valid, professionally recommended structures were designed. These tests were administered to teacher participants at the beginning and end of each workshop. Responses were collated to provide district-level and overall data about the effectiveness of the in-service workshops in the areas of transferring knowledge of agricultural literacy concepts as well as innovative teaching strategies for students of varying learning styles. Teachers received grade-level lesson plans and a class set of South Carolina Ag Maps. Commodity organizations including the American Farm Bureau, the South Carolina Beef Board and the South Carolina Forestry Association provided additional agricultural-related items for teachers.

AITC workshops were presented to full faculties and individual teachers from at least nine disadvantaged districts. Many individual teachers from qualifying districts attended the workshops at statewide subject-area teacher conferences and signed up for the summer graduate Institute. District and school workshops were presented in disadvantaged districts.

State: South Dakota
Project Title: Agriscience for Elementary Teachers II
Award Amount: $6,000
Project Duration: 12 months
Project Completed
Summary:
The summer workshop, AgriScience for Elementary Teachers II, focused on presenting South Dakota agriculture—biotechnology, renewable resource and value added agriculture—in ways that can be utilized in the areas of math, science, and social studies at the elementary level. South Dakota teachers of public, tribal and private schools were selected to participate in this workshop. Teachers were selected from a cross-section of the state, with hopes of having schools in every region represented. These teachers will help instigate workshops in their districts and/or regions, thus reaching a greater number of teachers through this grant.

A major feature of the workshop was hands-on activities. Training with the Soybean Science Kits was used as well as technical expertise from the Indiana Soybean Board, the University of Minnesota, and the past SDAITC Teacher of the Year. By linking Soybean Science and Biotechnology to a national curriculum—Food, Land & People—participants returned to their classrooms fully armed to integrate agriculture into their curriculum. Each participant provided a written plan for the integration of agricultural lessons presented.

Graduate credit from SDSU was available to participants at a reduced rate (responsibility of participant). The workshop was offered free to participants—their only expense was travel.

• Quality SGP workshops to reach 250-300 teachers in grades K-5.
• Research and develop a resource guide—lessons, activities and supporting educational materials—that sustain the SGP through interdisciplinary lessons and activities for grades K-5, including nutrition education. The resource guide is correlated to the Standards of Learning.
• Provide teachers with information and training in the SGP workshop so they can effectively utilize gardening activities in their classroom and/or start a garden at their school.

• To increase educators' understanding of agriculture and their ability to utilize agriculture and natural resource lessons to enhance core curriculum areas.
• Improve WAITC's ability to effectively implement, monitor, and measure the success of WAITC curriculum.
• Increase students', parents', teachers' and community members' understanding about the importance of agriculture and natural resources to Wyoming economy and quality of life.