The American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture has launched a new, unique online platform for K-12 and STEM educators who want to teach science through the lens of agriculture.
The Food and Agriculture Center for Science Education supports educators who teach, coach, or advise K-12 science coursework in public, private, formal, and informal educational spaces with a three-pronged approach consisting of classroom resources, professional development, and partnerships.
?We?re pleased the Food and Agriculture Center for Science Education will enable us to continue supporting educators in meaningful ways with relevant resources and vital professional development,? Daniel Meloy, executive director of the Foundation for Agriculture, said. ?There?s such an incredible connection between science and agriculture and food production, and students everywhere can become inspired by making that connection.?
The structure of the platform provides science educators with an immersive mix of valuable resources and professional development to help integrate agriculture into classrooms at all levels of education. The high-quality resources and professional development opportunities focus on relating the science principles found in agriculture with the core science disciplines.
Some of the upcoming content includes:
- Classroom resources- full units of instruction, curriculum, individual lessons and worksheets, references and more. This area focuses on creating and curating engaging, relevant, reliable and accurate resources that will equip science teachers to easily incorporate agriculture into the content they already teach to meet the Next Generation Science Standards. All materials will be open source.
- Professional development- immersive, experiential, supportive and accessible opportunities focused on developing, empowering and equipping educators not only from a teaching perspective, but especially through knowledge of the agricultural industry and methods of instructing that lend themselves to teaching science through the lens of agriculture.
- Partnerships- a pathway for strategically aligning partners such as industry experts, trade organizations, land grant university researchers and educators to best support both the immediate and long-term needs of science educators.
Materials already available include a full unit on genetics and heredity, a bundle of student materials, and a teaching guide on how cattle interact with the ecosystem.
The program?s first professional development event, scheduled for April 28 at 4 PM CT, is a virtual tour of ?science through the lens of agriculture.? Educators will leave with free open-source materials ready for immediate classroom use. Registration is available now at https://www.onthefarmstem.com/events/webinar-042822.
To learn more about the program and access the full library of resources, visit www.FoodAgSciEd.org.
