State Programs
State Summary 2010 — Kansas
State Contact
Ms. Cathy Musick
Kansas Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom
COE-KSU-124 Bluemont Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506
P: 785.532.7946
F: 785.532.7304
E: ksfac@k-state.edu
Website
Classroom Resources
Celebrate Wheat, Celebrate Sunflowers, Celebrate Beef; a series of lesson plans that provide teachers with materials for celebrating Kansas Week and to celebrate the 150th year of agriculture in Kansas.
We also have three other lesson plans that play on the theme of the Wizard of Oz "If I only had a Heart!" - Importance of Agriculture to feed a growing world population " If I only had a Brain!" - Technoloy advancement in Agriculture and non food uses of major crops; " If I only had Courage!" - Weather and Courage needed to face risks of weather in Agriculture. We continue to develop lesson plans that connect to the newly printed (2008) Kansas Natural Resource Guide. These can be found on the website under Teacher Resources. www.ksagclassroom.org. Be sure to view the prairie, watershed and soil lesson plans. We used ACE grant dollars to help produce these lesson plans.
We are currently updating our Crops & Oil Seed Educator Guide. Our goal is to have that ready to go for requests from teachers this fall. We are updating the name to Exploring Kansas PLANTS, Crops & Oil Seeds and are adding a new chapter on Specialty Crops. Lesson plans will be developed to compliment this background resource guide for teachers.
Major Program Accomplishments or Outputs
Assembly Program
Grade 1-2 Kansas Animals
Grade 3-4 Crops & Oil Seeds
Grade 5-6 Natural Resources
For the 2009-2010 School year we reached 1800 students through 20 assemblies. Support materials are provided to encourage continued learning after the assemblies.
We filled requests from 1107 teachers for Kansas Kids Connection Magazines. Estimated 27675 students received these.
We filled requests from 3100 teachers for Educator Resource Guides, Farm Animal; Crops & Oil Seeds, and Natural Resources. Estimated 77500 students participted in lesson plans connected to these
Kids Connection Magazines
We filled requests for 1350 Kansas Kids Connection Crops magazines and 1375 Farm Animals Magazines. We sent 11,700 Kansas Kids Connections Magazines (both crops and animal) to schools grades K-4. We've given 1038 teachers the Exploring Kansas Natural Resource Guides since it was printed in 2008. 1,038 teachers x 25 students = 25,950 students.
5 Lesson plans connecting to the NR Guide plus Kansas Curricular standards were developed by Kansas Teachers and are available on our website at www.ksagclassroom.org.
Ag-Wise Train the Trainer Workshop
A Partnership Training between Kansas Farm Bureau and KFAC for Ag In the Classroom presenters at the County Level had 94 participants in January and February of 2009.
Participants received training for a variety of Ag-based hands-on learning labs; Lesson plans highlighted were the new lessons created for the Natural Resource Educator Guide. Teachers received resource materials: shared ideas that work; practiced presentation skills; networked with others.
Who attended? County Farm Bureau Ag Ed. Volunteers; Ag Educators, Extension Educators and Volunteers, Youth Volunteers, Conservation District Managers Summer Session Courses
14 Kansas Teachers received three graduate credit hours after attending week long summer session courses: Connecting Agriculture to the Classroom; Classroom; Horticulture & School Gardens Olathe
Major Program Impacts or Outcomes
98% of teachers attending the summer course indicated they would incorporate lesson plans modeled.
100% of teachers completing the summer graduate courses generated high quality lesson plans as a part of their coursework.
Our current Teacher of the Year presented a power point during our Annual Meeting full of credits to resources provided by KFAC summer courses, and on-line teacher lesson plans as well as the new NR Guide. She gave concrete examples of how she incorporated Agriculture into her 5th grade classroom.
Reports back from the two Ag charter schools in Kansas who sent much of their staff for training during summer courses show impact by providing good factual resources and lesson plan ideas that they expanded on when creating a total school curriculum that uses agriculture as a tool to teach the core subject matter areas.
100% of attendees at an After School Conference were highly enthusiastic about taking plant and soil science lessons back to their elementary students for a fun and informative educational after school program. They requested a follow up plant science summer in-service training.
Teachers who have attended our summer courses and then applied for the Teacher of the Year indicated numerous impacts in how they were able to successfully design curriculum that allow them to incorporate teaching of Agriculture into core curriculum areas. They give testimonials that their students love the practical application or teaching ofreal life" that occurs.
98% of Ag-Wise teachers and volunteers returning for a second or third year report the usefulness of the lesson plans correlated to Kansas Curriculum standards
A majority of teachers attending Water Festivals and Ag Days with their students report the Natural Resource subject matter on watersheds and on soil developement and conservation is helpful when taking state assessment standardized tests.
Biosketch
An Undergrad degree from K-State in Agriculture Science
A Masters degree from K-State in Adult and Continuing Education
14 years experience as an Extension Educator in four counties in Kansas. Subject matter areas were Agriculture.
4-H Youth Development, Community Development
I have been with KFAC for 2 years in February.