Major projects accomplished this year

• Minnesota Ag in the Classroom maintained valuable funding via the MN Dept. of Agriculture. The Department annually funds the program with an internal appropriation of about $100,000. M-AITC also completed a new geography project called Food for Thought (tied to social studies academic standards) and kicked-off a new 22 title Agricultural Children's Literature "book bundle" project.

Major impacts the program had this year

• 125 children's literature "book bundles" were purchased/sponsored for local schools by various county ag groups. This supports the fact that language arts academic standards want more factual reading in schools.
• The student Minnesota AgMag Series is used by grades 4-6 teachers in some 650 Minnesota schools. A student pre- and post-test is provided in the AgMag Teacher Guide. Teacher responses regarding this test indicate a student score increase of 25-45% for the post-test.
• Nearly 100% of the higher education institutions receiving pre-service programs through M-AITC and the University of Minnesota's Education Specialist (Susan Anderson) requested multiple visits and increased methods presentations for their teacher education students during this last school year.