Lesson Plan #4: Tracing the Food, Local Foods

This week we went to St. Dominics to teach about local foods. This same lesson plan will occur next Friday at Greenvale without any edits!


It turns out that teaching about local foods is not nearly as hard as teaching about other subjects, such as the differences between organic foods and conventional foods. Students were very responsive to our lesson, and kept up wonderfully. When we got to the end and asked the harder questions, such as why local might be better than foods that travel a long distance, students immediately jumped to issues of freshness and pollution. We had anticipated that this would be one of the most difficult components of the lesson, and it turned out to be the easiest. The map activity was a little more difficult as it got chaotic for students to follow along, draw and voice their opinions simultaneously. Nonetheless, even in the chaos they continued to pay attention and engage with the questions we asked.

 LESSON PLAN:

Essential Question/s:
How far does our food travel to get to our tables?
What are the problems with having to bring food from so far away?
What options are good for Minnesota?

Objectives:
Students will vocalize possible places in the United States and the World that they think their food comes from.
Students will map out how food travels and where produce typically comes from.
Students will discover that very little of the food we eat is produced locally.
Students will learn key terms: Import, export, local, food miles

Materials, Tools and Resources:

• USA maps for each student to draw on
• Apples from various parts of the country/world
• Name tags for the ski
• Map of the world (powerpoint, smartboard or pull-down).

Today’s Prep Work:
    Look up stats for different foods!
    Look up which foods come from MN!
    make good nametags

Activities:
1. Review last week's lesson: organic and conventional foods.
2. Tell a story about two different foods, the food that is bought locally and food that is transported a great distance
3. Discuss where food comes from, using a map of the world and miles traveled in distance and in time driving. Students will draw where food comes from.
4. Students will compare a number of apples bought from a local grocery store and will learn how to identify where they came from by the labels.

Hook:
What does biodiversity mean? Is biodiversity good for farming? If farmers don’t want to use biodiversity for farming, what other options do they have?

See if students can remember one negative and one positive about both organic and conventional farming (we will help fill in the gaps!)

Procedure:
1. Review last week's lesson: organic and conventional foods. (5 minutes)

Ask: What does biodiversity mean? Is biodiversity good for farming? If farmers don’t want to use biodiversity for farming, what other options do they have?

What two types of farming did we discuss last week? (remind: both have pos, neg)

What type of farming are we doing in our garden?

2. People eat food everyday. Where does food come from? List on board. Usually students will say grocery store, and it is the job of the instructor to lead children to conclude that food actually comes from a farm and then travels to a grocery store. (3 mins)
3. Introduce the subject for today: Talking about where food comes from. Start with an engaging activity: skits! Each skit will  have different characters identified by name tags. One teacher will tell the following stories while characters quietly act out the process described by the narrator. Half the students will be involved in one skit, half in the other (7 minutes, 2 ish for each story).

   

THE LIFE OF AN HEIRLOOM TOMATO PLANT

Once upon a time there was a farmer named Zeb. Zeb loved his land and loved his garden and produced foods that don't pollute nature. He used organic methods, like biodiversity and compost, to grow his crops.

In the spring, Zeb planted a row of tomato seeds in his garden. The tomatoes were right next to broccoli and beans and lived in a diverse garden. Zeb watered the tomato plants and watched them carefully as they grew, removing any weeds that might hurt the tomatos. Zeb nurtured the seeds as they grew into beautiful, healthy fruit-bearing plants!

One day, when the tomatoes turned red, Zeb picked the tomatoes so he could sell them to other people who lived in his town. He took the tomatoes to a farmers market in town that afternooon and his friend, Zonna, who worked at the bank, bought them from him. She took the tomatoes home and turned them into a delicious salsa!!

THE JOURNEY OF A BANANA

Once upon a time there was a farmer named Manuela. Manuela lived in Ecuador.  Manuela loved her land and loved her garden and produced foods that don't pollute nature. She used organic methods, like biodiversity and compost, to grow her crops.

Manuela owned a large banana orchard, full of tall and beautiful banana trees. In the spring, small bananas would start to grow from the banana trees in bunches. The bananas started small and very green bananas. As the spring progressed, they got bigger and bigger, but they still remained green. Manuela nurtured the trees as they grew the beautiful bananas.

One day, when the bananas were still green, Manuela picked the bananas from the tree. They weren’t ripe yet, but she knew they had a long journey ahead of them. If she picked the bananas when they were yellow, they would arrive brown at their destination. She packed the bananas into crates full of ethylene gas which would preserve them, and loaded them onto a truck.

The truck went to the United States, a trip that took a whole week! When the bananas arrived at a grocery store in Minnesota  they were still green because of the gas they were stored in. Eventually they turned yellow and the grocery store clerk put them on sale. Eventually, Mark went to the store and bought yellow bananas. He took the bananas home and ate them with his cereal.

4. Map activity: Students have individual maps and coloring tools and instructor can use the smartboard to draw on top of a map of the US.  (10)

• First, Identify Minnesota. Maybe even identify some other critical states (California, Washington, Georgia, etc.).
• Present a fruit/vegetable. Ask students where they think this crop is grown. After some guessing by the students, reveal the real answer in location. Draw the fruit on the map where it lands and tell the students not only the food miles but also the number of hours it would take to drive this far.

6. Break students into small groups. We’re visiting a local farm next week--why might local farms be better. Significant that food travels different distances: fresher, less pollution.
7. Present apples to each group and ask students to see if they can identify where each apple came from. Instructors will split between the groups and will help students learn how to identify where they came from by the sticker.

Assessment:
Students will draw a personal map, noting where each food comes from on the map.
Students will be able to identify where produce came from

Closing:
What are we doing next??? A field trip to a local farm!!

Filler Activities:
If time is left, students will remain in small groups to discuss what they’ve learned that day and their own personal experiences which relate to the activities of the day.

Lesson Plan Citations:

www.bonniecabbageprogram.com

Lesson Plan #3: Why Organic?

This week we tried to teach the kids about different farming methods, mostly the differences between organic farming and conventional farming. This week was probably our least successful lesson so far. First of all, it was severe weather awareness week, and we coincidentally had tornado drills during both classes. That was exciting! But we also discovered that some of the concepts went over their heads so to speak. Even as I was preparing the lesson, I was finding that it was very difficult to come up with simple activities to explain the many complexities in the organic/conventional debate in only 45 minutes. The food labels activity went ok, but they had a hard time focusing. They were able to pull some things out of the movie clips, but they were probably a little too brief and had a lot of things in them that maybe required some previous knowledge. We also found that, although having a sheet for them to write stuff down on did help them stay focused and process some of the information a little more, writing is still difficult for the third grade level when that is not the sole focus of the activity. Even so, I think we were able to get them to understand that there are positives and negatives to both kinds of farming.


Essential Question/s:
How do conventional and organic farming methods measure up? 

Objectives:
Students will be able to:

• define and explain what makes farming “organic farming” vs. “conventional farming”
• express their opinion and debate with other students which they think is better and back up their opinion
• connect the concept of “organic farming” to our garden

Materials, Tools and Resources:

• food labels for organic and non-organic products
• pictures of organic vs conventional food items
• video clips of interviews with farmersActivities:
• Defining organic and conventional farming (5 min)
• Perspectives stations (2 x 7 minutes each)
• Debate/discussion (6 minutes)
• Drawing (5 minutes)

Hook/intro: (5)

• What did we talk about last week? see if they can define biodiversity
• Remind them of the game last week- what did we do to solve the problem of the bugs killing all the plants (answer: diversify). What else do farmers do a lot to get rid of bugs that are killing their plants? (answer: spray pesticides). These are two ways that farmers use to take care of their crops.
• Today we are going to learn more about two different methods, or ways, that farmers go about taking care of their plants and getting them to grow big and strong. Write the words “organic farming” and “conventional farming” on the board and then list the characteristics of each (organic: no chemicals, biodiversity, compost. conventional: pesticides, heribicides, fertilizer, monoculture). Leave on the board so they can refer back to it.

Procedure:

• Learning perspectives: Split into two stations: producer and consumer (7 minutes)
• Give each student a folded-in-half piece of paper that has a blank space at the top and the bottom half split into “organic” and “conventional” with “positives” and “negatives” under each. For the last minute of each station, have the kids write down some ideas in each of the sections on their sheets of paper telling them that they will need this information in order to back up their ideas in the debate.
• Consumers: Bring in several food labels (they can be real or made up, but best if real, good ones: bread, peanuts). Make sure some are organic and the others are not, but do not tell them which is which. Also hide the price.
• Have students read out loud the ingredients of the food and work in partners to circle/highlight which ones they do not know. Talk about the ones they don’t know- what do they think they are for? Why are there more ingredients in one than the other? guessing game: can they tell which one is organic?  Take home message: 1) non- organic food often has a lot of ingredients that we don’t know, and are usually not as healthy (e.g. peanut butter has sugar and molasses)
• guessing game: can they guess the price of each item? Talk about how some people can’t pay a lot of money for food. Take home message: 2) organic food is often more expensive, but not always!
• Look at the pictures of the bananas. Discuss what the differences are, and speculate why. Can they tell which is organic and which is not? Which one is more expensive? Which one might taste better? Take home message: 3) organic produce often has blemishes, whereas conventional looks perfect.
• take home messages and some others to talk about if there is time: 1) organic food is often more expensive, but not always! 2) Organic can often be bought in bulk and then is probably less expensive 3) non- organic food often has a lot of ingredients that we don’t know, and are usually not as healthy (peanut butter has sugar and molasses) 4) Preservatives often give non-organic food longer shelf time 5) organic produce often has blemishes, whereas conventional looks perfect 6) What might be in the food that isn’t in the ingredients list? (pesticide left overs)
• Producers: play several clips with interviews of farmers (7 minutes)
• 1st clip: Conventional farmer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRwg05M83Gk, but uses as little as possible
• why do farmers use fertilizers and pesticides to begin with? What are their advantages? Why does this farmer still use them? (plants grow faster, better, bigger, better looking, cheaper, hard on a large scale)
• why does he try to use as little chemicals as possible? (worker health and safety are in danger with harsh chemicals)
• 2nd clip: Nourish 8:45-9:40
• Why does the person being interviewed say using chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers is bad for the environment? (grow pests along with crop, runoff of chemicals- dead zone)
• What alternatives could you use instead of chemicals and fertilizers (have them think back to the game last week- biodiversity, the three sisters, then ask if they know what compost is)

• Debate- maybe less of a debate but ask a question and have them state their opinion and say why. (6-10 minutes)
• Talk about what a good debate is (respecting other people’s opinions, backing up your opinions with evidence)
• Ask the students the following questions. Ask students to raise their hands and the moderator will alternate calling on students.
• If your parents gave you money to go to the grocery store, would you buy an organic product or a non-organic product?
• If you were a farmer, would you use fertilizer or compost? What if you were a plant, what would you want the farmer to use?
• If you were a farmer, would you use pesticides or use biodversity to keep pests from ruining your crop?

Assessment:

• the debate- make sure students back up their opinion, ask them to clarify their statements
• drawings

Closing:

• Will we be doing organic or conventional farming in our garden?

Lesson Plan #2: Biodiversity

We led the second in a series of four classroom lessons relating to gardening last Friday. This time, we talked with the third graders about biodiversity. This was a big concept for them to learn, so it was important to define the concept clearly at the beginning of the and return to it often, connecting biodiversity to whichever topic we were discussing at the time. Here is the outline of the lesson plan:

Essential Question/s:
·      Why is biodiversity important?

Objectives:
Students will be able to:
·      define the term biodiversity
·      give examples of biodiverse communities
·      compare the examples of biodiversity we talk about in class to the biodiverse garden we will plant
·      conclude that biodiverse communities are stronger and more cooperative than communities made up of few species

Materials, Tools and Resources:
·      SmartBoard with projection from a PowerPoint or equivalent program
·      “Bug Gloves”: rubber or nitrile gloves with green decorative attachments (2 pairs)
·      String (field tape works well) and notecards (enough for the class)
·      Biodiversity game found at: http://www.seedsavers.org/pdf/kids_curriculum_fall.pdf

Today’s Prep Work:
·      Make gloves
·      Make necklaces
·      Prepare powerpoints [Biodiversity, 3 Sisters]

Activities:
Defining biodiversity
Game: biodiverse communities and pest resistance
Discussion: Cooperation within biodiverse communities--The 3 Sisters Model


Hook:
·      Ask if anyone remembers our names and why we are here. What did we do/talk about last time?

Procedure:
Defining Biodiversity (10 minutes)
·      Post the word “Biodiversity” on the SmartBoard. Explain to the students that this word is made up of two parts: “bio” and “diversity.” Circle the two parts of the word in two different colors. Then ask students what the individual parts mean. Students who answer correctly will put the definitions up on the board (“bio” meaning “life” and “diversity” meaning “many things”). Then, return to the larger word (biodiversity=many different kinds of living things).
·      Make sure to explain that “biodiverse” is a word to describe groups of living things that are diverse.
·      To segue into the next part, put biodiversity into context: We often talk about biodiverse communities of living things, i.e. a garden, forest, prairie...
Game: Biodiverse Communities and Pest Resistance (15 minutes)
·      Hand out the “bug gloves” to two students. Give the rest necklaces with notecards attached. Tell the students to flip their necklaces so that the word “corn” is showing.
·      On the words “ready, set, grow!” each student will begin silently acting out a corn plant (starting as a seed, growing up into a plant as the leader “waters” it). On the words “ready, set, buzz!” the two students designated to be pests will begin tapping all corn plants on the shoulder. When a student is “eaten” by the pest, they must die a dramatic death. When the round is over, get everyone’s attention again.
·      Tell the kids to flip over their cards so that the corn side is facing in and a different plant name is facing out (a few students will have the word corn on both sides of the necklace). Then, replay the scenario from the first round of the game. This time, the pests will still attack only corn plants but cannot attack the other plants. At the end of the round, the majority of the class will still be standing.
·      After the game: Think, Pair, Share. Tell the students to think about which scenario would be a better one for our garden. Then, have them discuss their reasoning with a partner. Finally, partners will defend their answer to the rest of the class.
Discussion: Cooperation within Biodiverse Communities: The 3 Sisters Model (15 minutes)
·      Split students into 3 groups (one for each helper; this can be modified to adjust for the amount of helpers, although smaller groups are more effective). The following will occur in each of the small groups:
·      Ask the students why cooperation is important. They should have many ideas to share, but be sure to touch on helping each other get what we need and achieving goals together.
·      Then, move on to say that cooperation occurs in plant communities too. The goal for plants is to grow, and biodiverse communities achieve this goal by helping each other get the resources they need.
·      Ask the students what plants need to live. [water, light, nutrients, support]
·      Project a drawing of the 3 sisters gardening model (corn, beans, and squash) on the SmartBoard. Still in small groups, discuss how the corn provides support for the beans, the beans take the nutrient, nitrogen, out of the air and puts it into the soil, and the squash grows low on the ground and helps the soil retain water.

Assessment:
·     Think, Pair, Share activity
·      Discussion in small groups—make sure the students grasp the concepts of biodiversity, community strength, and cooperation between plants.

Closing
·      Questions for the whole class (5 minutes)·   What was the most important thing you learned today? ·  Why is biodiversity important? [we learned from the game that biodiverse communities are strong and aren’t vulnerable to threats such as pests, and we learned from our small group discussion that plants growing in a biodiverse community cooperate to grow]




Here are some pictures from our activities this week:

Learning what biodiversity means

Corn plants growing

After the pest had killed all the corn

Indoor Planting

This past week, we planted seeds indoors with the third graders. Some plants, like the tomatoes, sweet peppers, and eggplants we planted this week, need a head start before outdoor planting occurs. Minnesota has a short growing season, so in order for plants to be ready to eat before the fall frost comes, certain plants need to be put in the ground as seedlings rather than as seeds. 

A great resource we used to find out when seeds should be planted is http://raisedgardenbedmn.com/Vegetable_Planting_Dates_.html. It shows planting dates and growing tips for most of the major plants that are grown in gardens, all specialized for the Minnesota climate. 

The first classroom we visited this week was at St. Dominic. There, the students planted many seeds directly into large tubs of soil and then put them onto the growing station in their classroom. Because we planted inside, we were thankful to be using a tarp to protect the carpet from soil spills. However, the large planting bins caused the planting process to be a bit hectic because there were several students surrounding each bin. Additionally, the large groups of students hindered our ability to keep the class on the same page. 

At Greenvale Park, we took a different strategy. We moved the planting outside so groups of students could be more spread out. The kids also planted the seeds in small pots rather than large bins, so there were teams of two students at each pot rather than five or six. We also did a demonstration of the planting process with the Greenvale students, which helped alleviate some confusion along the way. 

In both classrooms, the kids seemed excited to be growing their very own plants that they will be able to eat at harvest time. They all promised to take good care of their seedlings until we return! Below are 

two pictures of the growing station at Greenvale Park. The top set of pots on the growing station are the tomato, pepper, and eggplant seeds that the third graders planted. Right: a close-up of the pots (9 sections in each pot, each with two seeds planted)

A few tips for future school gardeners:

-Keep the process simple for the kids: do as much organizing and sorting that you can ahead of time

-Do a demonstration of proper planting before the students do it on their own

-Plant outside if possible. This gets messy!

-Keep the kids in small, separate groups. This will allow you to manage the class better.

-Put coffee filters in the bottom of the pots so that soil doesn't spill out

-Old window blinds make great pot markers. Use a sharpie to label plants!

-Designate one helper to be the photographer (that should be their only task during the activity). We were so busy helping with the planting process that we didn't get any pictures of the kids in action.

Lesson Plan #1

Right before spring break we had our first lesson. We were only able to go to Greenvale because of scheduling conflicts at St. Dominics. We did a 30 minute lesson, but afterward we all agreed it felt like 10 minutes it went by so fast! The 3^rd graders were very excited to have us in the classroom with them, and participated in our activities enthusiastically. Here is an outline of our lesson plan:

Essential Question/s:
Why would you want to grow food in a garden? What do gardens look like? What is healthy to put in your body?
Objectives:
Students will be able to:
Identify plant and its produce, Distinguish between plants
Judge food based on nutritional value
Consider various modes for consuming and cooking produce (recipe to be taken home)

Materials, Tools and Resources:
Apples to Apples food game
Pictures and matching cards, food samples
Recipe form
Today’s Prep Work:
Approve of Apples to Apples game traveling to GVP
Make recipe form, translate to Spanish
Print pictures for taste testing matching cards
Look up info (nutrition facts, where it is grown etc) about specific plants
Activities:

• Introduce ourselves, our project, why we’re here (5)
• Split into two groups, do two different activities: (25)
• Apples to Apples nutrition game
• matching
• recipes if there is time

· Closure!

Hook:

• Introduce ourselves
• names
• senior ES majors
• We’ll be growing a garden together
• learning about growing food
• later, we’ll plant seeds and take care of the garden outside
• Today, we’ll be talking about...
• foods we grow in gardens
• how and why fruits and vegetables are good for our bodies

Procedure:

• Introduce ourselves, our project, why we’re here (5)
• Split into two groups, do two different activities: (25)

· Apples to Apples nutrition game (10)

Each student gets 5 playing cards. Each card represents a single food (tomato, wheat, corn, broccoli etc). On one side is a picture of the food item and its name, and on the other side facts about that food (potassium, protein, calories etc). The moderator (one of the St. Olaf students) has a separate stack of category cards. These cards have questions like: what food is a root vegetable? which food has the most protein? The moderator chooses one card and reads it to the group. The students then select one of their cards that they think answers the question the best without looking at the back, and sets it down on the table. Once all students have made their selection, everyone turns over their card and we see which person/people win that round. Once a single round is finished, the cards that were used are discarded and the students get to take another playing card, so that they always have 5 choices in their hand.

· Matching (10)

We will have 5-7 food samples that are pre-cut and ready for students to taste test. Student will get one of each sample on a plate. We will then have a matching set of cards that are pictures of each of the vegetable/fruit samples but that might not have the actual vegetable/fruit in the picture. We will play a matching game to see if students can match their food samples to the correct pictures. As each sample is correctly matched with its picture, the students will be able to eat the sample on their plate. When we are eating the samples we will ask/discuss where the food was grown, how it is good for our bodies, and what kinds of dishes it might be in at home or in the cafeteria.

· Recipes (5) (All together at end)

Give each student the recipe form. We will ask them: do you know what a recipe is? And discuss with them why a recipe might be a good thing to have. We will ask them to take the recipe form home to their parents to fill out and bring back to class.

Assessment:
The students will make wiser decisions in the “Apples to Apples” nutrition game.
Participation in the matching and game activities
Closing:

• What we did today...
• talked about some of the plants we’ll grow this spring
• talked about nutrition in vegetables
• What we’ll do next time...
• planting seeds of the plants we’ll grow in the garden