This learning module provides a basic understanding of agriculture and farming by expanding on the different types that can be found in each.
Agriculture, Farming, Modern, Traditional, Subsistence, Industrialized, Crop
Overview:
This module is designed as a flipped classroom learning environment. The students are to complete their lesson at home and then come into the classroom and use that knowledge to complete activities. I have never created a lesson plan and I have no experience teaching in a formal setting. I chose agriculture and farming because I grew up on a farm and it is how my family survived. I recall that my father, with the local Farm Bureau group, would spend a day in an elementary school teaching the children about the farm. These schools were located in or around Chicago so it was all new material for them. He would tell me how the students were amazed at what a farm was and this is why I decided to create my learning module on this topic. There are a lot of large city schools where students have a need to learn the basics of agriculture and farming to understand where food, clothes and other farm grown things are started.
Intended Learning Outcome:
This module is set for fifth or sixth grade students. These students most likely will have no prior knowledge about agriculture and farms. They should have experience writing a paper that includes a reference. This module includes five online learning modules that take between 30 to 45 minutes, five in-class activites that will be 45 minutes, and this module will run a period of five weeks, one lesson per week.
The students will be required to complete the readings and videos of each module. There is also one activity per module that must be completed. This includes posting updates, one paper, and a peer review.
The teacher will be here to guide the students in their learning. The teacher will facilitate the classroom activites. Preparation for these activites will need to be done before each class. The teacher can review each lesson directly to see what is needed for each class activity.
Learning Objective:
In this lesson you will learn:
Before you attend the first class session on this subject, you should complete the four tasks below.
1. Take survey.
Pre-class survey- Agriculture and Farming
2. Watch the video.
This video defines Agriculture and provides the importance of agriculture in everyday life. Your goal is to understand the definition and learn the reasons why agriculture is important in your life.
Retreived from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_AO-plpX7k.
3. Post an update
To post an update, you will go into the class discussion forum. There will be a discussion board for each update for this module. For this one, please use the board titled "Agriculture Defined". Please make sure to title your post and include all the required information in the post. The following discussion boards will be titled the same as the learning module that it is for.
The video discusses the Importance of Agriculture and lists 7 important parts that agriculture supports. Number 3, or the Supply of Food and Fodder, states that agriculture provides food to humans and domestic animals.
For your update, please select a food item with an ingredient label. Post the name of the product and then list the ingredients provided on the ingredient label. Then write a brief description of the ingredients that you think are made by agriculture.
4. Comment on two updates made by your peers.
Your comment should include if you agree or disagree with their list of agriculture provided ingredients and you should also provide an explanation on why you have that opinion. You should research online and provide at least one cited source, MLA format, to support your opinion.
Bonus Content:
The National FFA Organization, or just FFA, is a student organization that is available to high school students. This organization builds leadership, promotes personal growth, and career success through the learing of agriculture education. Below is a video of FFA members at the 2017 National Convention stating what they think agriculture means. I highly encourage anyone who may have interest in agriculture to check out FFA.
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtXJwmW-cvM.
Learning Objective:
In this lesson the student will learn:
This pre-class introduction will help them gain a basic understanding of agriculture through self-guided learning. There are four steps they are to complete which are outlined below with the teacher responsibility.
Each module has a corosponding in-class acitivity. For most of the activities, there are preparations that must be done before each class session. Please make sure to read throught the activities so you can schedule when to prepare the activity materials to be ready for the class session.
1. Pre-class survey.
You are responsible for reviewing the survey answers and see what areas the students need to focus on for the corresponding lesson.
You can use this to also see who may already have some basic knowledge of this topic. If some students present to have knowledge of this topic, you can assign them a presentation role for one of the topics. They would get 5 to 10 minutes before the in-class activity began for the day to present an overview of what the online learning module was about. You can require them to use two or three facts about the topic that is new material and was not mentioned on the online learning module. This will keep them interested and allow them to share with the class.
2. They will be watching a video.
There is no responsiblity from the teacher unless there are questions about information on the video.
3. Post an update.
All updates should be reviewed by the teacher. This update should include the following:
Please provide feedback to the students on their ability to include all requirements and their thought process for what they think is made from agriculture. This feedback should be sent to the student via a message in the LMS learning system you are using.
4. Comment on 2 updates made by their peers.
All comments should be reviewed by the teacher. Each comment should include:
Please provide feedback to the students on their ability to include all requirements and their ability to explain why they agree or disagree. This feedback should be sent to the student via a message in the LMS learning system you are using.
These updates and comments are not about getting the ingredient list right but about having the students start critically thinking about how agriculture is found in everyday life.
Learning Objective:
In this lesson you will learn:
Industrial agriculture is defined as a “form of modern farming that refers to the industrialized production of livestock, poultry, fish, and crops”. (New World Encyclopedia, 2018) This type of agriculture uses machinery and farming techniques to distribute mass amounts of product meeting the demands of a large population. This is also known as commercial agriculture.
Subsistence agriculture is defined as “a mode of agriculture in which a plot of land produces only enough food to feed the family or small community working it”. (N.W.E., 2018) This type of agriculture is used for families to grow their own products, mostly for family consumption but sometimes they grow to sell at a farmer’s market within their communities. A farmer’s market is where people can sign up as a vendor and sell their products, like produce they have grown, baked goods, handmade crafts, and flowers and plants. These vendors/farmers can travel outside their communities to sell their products at other farmer's markets also. For example, a farmer would travel into a big city to sell their corn. The below video was part of a news story by ABC13 Houston and it takes you through a farmer’s market and how it brings the community together.
Retreived from https://youtu.be/nL9RHs9Ne7Q.
Below is a writing activity that you should prepare and post an update. In class, you will share your choice and information on the product with your classmates in a small group setting.
Post an Update:
Please start with the writing prompt: “On one acre of land, I would…….”
Then you will pick what you will do with that one acre of land, or 43,560 square feet (Merriam Webster, 2019), by answering these questions:
You do not need to comment on your peers' updates but please review them before class.
This picture is a great example of what one acre of land is equivalent to.
Learning Objective:
In this lesson you will learn:
To gain a better understanding of these types of farming, please see this Study.com explaination. It gives a great overview of industrialized and subsistence farming. This information, along with this picture below, will be useful to guide your students through the activity.
Activity: approximately 30 to 40 minutes
This activity will be used to foster peer interaction and to gain trust of their peers. You should review the updates before this class period and for each product that is grown/raised, designate it to industrialized farming, subsistence farming, or both.
Prompt: What would they do with an acre of land?
Students were asked to provide an update with the writing prompt. Divide the class into groups ( three or four per group) and have them designate one person as the presenter. Give them 15 minutes to share their choices and information with their peers. Encourage them to talk about additional facts they may know of the products other peers chose. The presenter should note from each person:
On the board, you should draw three columns with the headers as follows:
| Industrialized | Both | Subsistence |
After the 15 minute group time is up, each presentor should provide their group's answers to the noted bullet points. After each product, you should ask the class if this item can be used in industrialized farming, subsistence farming, or both. Engage the students in discussion about why it could be one or both types of farming.
Additional Resources:
Learning Objective:
In this lesson you will learn:
Primitive/Simple Subsistence Farming
This is a self-sufficient farming technique and is the oldest form of agriculture in the world. (Chand, n.d.) This food is mostly grown for personal use but can also be used to barter for trade of other products/goods or cash. You can typically find this type of farming in the tropics. As you can see from the map below, this is mostly in the southern hemisphere.
There are six characteristics that primitive subsistence farming locations feature. (Chand, n.d.)
Intensive Subsistence Farming
Intensive subsistence farming describes when there is high output of products with minimum labor. Below is a video that will explain more about Intensive subsistence farming.
Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Q75vNR2nII8.
This has highlighted the different types of subsistetnce farming. To gain a more in-depth understanding, please read the article Types of Subsistence Farming: Primitive and Intensive Subsistence Farming by Smriti Chand (n.d.).
Soil quality is a large part of determining what the farmer can grow, the quantity that can grow, and how often the product can be grown. To learn more about soil, please watch this video below from AgriLife Starr.
Retrieved from https://youtu.be/dsfJRwZXaVk.
Make an Update:
For this update, you will first play a game called Thrive. This game will help you better understand the reasoning behind why primitive subsistence farming did field rotations after the soil was no longer viable. There are many games on this site, please select the correct one. The game icon matches this picture:
After completing the game, post an update on one type of soil (clay, sand, or silt) by researching it online. Please make sure to cite your source in MLA format. Provide the following in the update:
Reply to two of your peers' post with the following:
Learning Objective:
In this lesson the student will learn:
In this update, the students will learn about the two types of subsistence farming. They will also learn about three types of soil and the effect is has on subsistence farming.
Classroom Activity:
The students will be conducting a soil texture analysis.
This activity was retrieved from Soil Science Society of America website. The pdf instructions are below:
Before class, you will need to make enough jars for half the class. Complete each jar up to step 8. Step 8 is where the students will take over. This is to save time since the activity requires 6 hours of down time between steps 7 and 8.
Break the students into groups of 2. Give each group one jar and a whiteout pen. Tell them to start at Step 8 and work through the steps. Ask them to keep a document of their findings and any comments they may have for each step. At the end of the analysis, they should turn in the document with both members name on top.
Learning Objectives:
In this lesson you will learn:
Farming has changed a lot over the years because of the advances of machines and technology. These advances have created the industrialized farming sector along with improving the subsistence farming. Reference.com (2019) defines traditional farming as “a type of farming that uses techniques developed over decades or centuries to ensure good, sustainable yield over time in a specific area or region. Modern farming uses the improved technology and techniques that have been developed recently with all. The below picture is a good reference for more differences between modern and traditional farming.
To learn more about the difference between traditional and modern farming, please review this slideshow from Moin Qureshi (2017).
Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/MoinTurkey/traditional-and-modern-agriculture.
In the 1900’s, farmers used horses to pull plows to cultivate the fields, planted crops, pulled wagons along with other duties. To read more about traditional farming, visit Living History Farms. You could say they were the “engine” of the farm. Today, farmers drive tractors that can steer themselves, create straight rows of planted crop, and provide many other functions to help the farmer.
Activity
Compare and Contrast Analysis
There are many things that we can compare besides farming when it comes to traditional and modern ways. Your assignment will be to write a paper comparing and contrasting traditional and modern things. This will be reviewed by 2 of your peers, sent back for edits, then turned into your teacher. Once you turn it in to your teacher, she will review it, make comments, and return to you for final correction. Once you turn in the final paper, it will be published on our classroom page under the Agriculture and Farming section.
You will choose your topic from a shortened list of pictured items from the article in Living History Farms. They are below:
Rubric:
Please submit your analysis here before this class period.
Learning Objective:
In this lesson the students will learn:
The activity will be a compare and contrast analysis that will be peer reviewed, returned for edits, then submitted to you.
Before doing the classroom activity, show the students this quick video that compares the past and present of farming by Jenna Peters (2015, Dec 4).
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7QrvJua2uE.
Classroom Activity:
Objective: For this activity, each group will work together to create a farm in the type they are assigned, either modern or traditional. This will encourage collaboration and creative thinking. The role of the teacher for this activity is to monitor the groups and make sure that each person is contributing and they are working as a team.
Divide the students into two groups, the modern farm group and the traditional farm group. Each group will get a poster board where they will organize their farm. They will research online and print out pictures of items, animals, structures, and anything else they believe would be found on their farm. They will then organize those pictures accordingly. They can write notes under the pictures to remember why they added them. Encourage them to think outside the box. For example, the modern farm puts a tractor on their board. Well with a tractor you need gas and a place to store it.
Give them most of the class period to build their farms. With about 10 minutes left, call time and ask for one person to present each board. Ask the group not presenting to say a few things that they would add to the presenting group's board. Switch and repeat with the groups.
This activity is not to be graded. This activity's primary purpose is to have the students interact with their peers through collaboratation.
Learning Objective:
In this lesson you will learn:
Crop is a plant or plant product that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2019) Crop can be categorized into six categories listed below. To learn about these types of crops, please read the entry on the National Geographic Society webiste called, Crop. Click on each crop to see an image of one crop that falls under that category.
In order for crop to be ready for a farmer to sell or eat, it has to be planted, harvested, and everything in between. Please watch the below videos to see the process crop go through. The first video is on corn, is by ISRAEL Agriculture Technology (2017, Jul 14).
The second video is about cotton from the Science Channel (2019, Apr 5).
Activity:
You need to complete a peer review of 2 of your classmates' compare and contrast analysis paper. You should provide 5 writing edits (punctuation, spelling, grammer) and 5 suggestions/praise for the comparison or contrast of the items.
Grading Rubric:
Please complete your peer reviews before class.
Learning Objective:
In this lesson the students will learn:
Classroom Activity:
This activity is to reiterate their learning of the different types of crop by doing a fun, interactive game. By the end of the game, they should be able to identify different types of each catetgory of crop. You will divide students into small groups (2 or 3 students) and then each group will compete against another group.
How to Set Up:
Prepare flash cards of different types of each crop. You can also provide a picture on the back of the flash card for a visual. An example would be:
Question: Alfalpha is a type of what crop?
Answer: feed crop.
The categories are below:
Create a game board similiar to the below picture so that it provides a "race" board and also select game pieces. You can leave the squares blank or you can put in things like "move 2 squares back" or similar things to make it more interesting. The game pieces can be anything, a button, a rock, a penny; or you can make it more interesting by using a piece of corn or something that is related to agriculture.
Once there are two groups per board, give them a stack of flash cards, a game piece, and one dice.
How To Play:
Group B will select the flash card off the top of the stack and ask group A the question. If group A answers the question correctly, they get to roll the dice and move their game piece the appropriate amount of squares. If they get it wrong, they do not get to roll or move. Then group A asks group B the question on the flash card and the cylce continues until a team reaches the finish/end square.
Learning Objectives:
In this lesson you will learn:
Livestock is defined as "farm animals who are raised to generate a profit" (Your Dictionary, 2018). So livestock farming is the business of raising and caring for livestock. There are many different types of livestock. To learn more about livestock farming, please read this article by Farmer's weekly (2018) titled, Understanding the basics of livestock farming.
Livestock need to be cared for. The type of livestock and where the farm is located will factor into how to care for the livestock. Just like you, livestock need food and water. Some livestock also need shelter. Please review the article from Rural Living Today (2019) titled Basics of Caring for Livestock - Different Animals Certain Requirements. You should also watch the video below.
(Ketcham, 2014, Oct 26).
Activity:
Read through the reviews that you received back from your peers. Make any edits to your paper you feel are needed. If you are not taking the advice of your peer, please note under their review why there is something you feel does not need to be changed.
Please turn your final paper in here before class.
Learning Objectives:
In this lesson the student will learn:
You have reached the last class on the subject of agriculture and farming. The students have received a great overview of agriculture and farming while doing independent and classroom activities.
To reward the students for their hardwork, you can spend this class session showing a documentary video called Farmland. Here is the information regarding the video and where you can find it. This will be a good review for the students while reiterating some information that they have learned this lesson along with new information.
You will need to provide a review of the analysis based on the rubric given to the students. The rubric they were given is below. Once you have completed the review, return back to the students for modification.
Rubric:
Learning Objective:
Assignment:
You will work on the final revisions of your paper based on the feedback from your teacher.
Please submit your final analysis here by Friday, December 13th.
Update:
On Monday, December 16th, the teacher will post everyone's final analysis on the class website under Agriculture and Farming.
Please read through your classmate's work. We encourage you to read all the submissions from your classmates but you are only required to read 3. After you read each one, post a comment under the posted work. The comment should include one fact that you learned or one thing you found interesting that the paper.
Learning Objective:
Assignment:
The final paper is due to you by Friday, December 13th. You will then grade the final paper and how they responded to the peer reviews on their work. The rubric is below. Once graded, post the final paper to the class website under Agriculture and Farming.
Rubric:
2 page minimum, 3 page max
Double spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman
Use at least 2 references in MLA format
Provide 3 items that have been modernized
Compare or contrast each item in regard to:
Time
Technogoly
Safety
What supplies were needed then vs now
Update:
The students are to read each others work. They are required to post a comment on 3 papers by their peers, at least. We encourage that they read all the papers. Give them a reminder to read each others work as they are getting ready to leave at the end of the school day.
Extra Discussion Opportunity:
When reviewing the comments, make note of a few different ones. Bring them up in class within that same week and facilitate a discussion with the students on that topic. This will create some class discussion after the learning module has been completed and it will reinforce their knowledge.
(n.d.). Retrieved November 26, 2019, from https://binged.it/2ra10JJ.
ABC13 Houston (2019, Oct 15). Farmer's market offers goodies once a month [video file]. Retreived from https://youtu.be/nL9RHs9Ne7Q.
Agri-Bio-Tech (2017, January 20). importance and branches of agriculture [video file]. Retreived from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_AO-plpX7k
Brody, S. (2018, April 4). Understanding the basics of livestock farming. Retrieved December 5, 2019, from https://www.farmersweekly.co.za/farm-basics/how-to-livestock/basics-of-livestock-farming/.
Chand, S. (2014, February 8). Types of Subsistence Farming: Primitive and Intensive Subsistence Farming. Retrieved November 29, 2019, from http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/farming/types-of-subsistence-farming-primitive-and-intensive-subsistence-farming/25457.
Industrial Agriculture. (2018, March 3). Retrieved November 26, 2019, from https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Industrial_agriculture.
Ketcham, Abigail (2014, October 26). How to Take Care of Farm Animals [video file]. Retreived from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9SMYQpk148.
Living History Farms. (2019). Horse-Powered Farm . Retrieved December 3, 2019, from https://www.lhf.org/visit/about-the-farms/1900-horse-powered-farm/.
National FFA Organization (2017, January 23). What does agricutlure mean? [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtXJwmW-cvM.
Peters, Jenna (2015, December 15). Farming Past and Present [video file]. Retreived from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7QrvJua2uE.
Qureshi, M. (2017, May 10). Traditional and Modern Agriculture. Retrieved December 2, 2019, from https://www.slideshare.net/MoinTurkey/traditional-and-modern-agriculture.
Rudebjer, P. (2011). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Comparison-of-modern-and-traditional-agricultural-approaches_tbl3_277351284
Rural Living Today. (2019, October 3). Basics of Caring for Livestock - Different Animals Certain Requirements. Retrieved December 5, 2019, from https://rurallivingtoday.com/livestock/basics-caring-livestock/.
Sammis, T. (2019). Soil Texture Analysis. Retrieved December 5, 2019, from https://www.soils4kids.org/files/s4k/soil-texture-experiment.pdf.
Science Channel (2019, April 5). How Cotton is Processed in Factories [video file]. Retreived from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHgNoSYlhYs.
Subsistence Farming. (2008, April 2). Retrieved November 26, 2019, from https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Subsistence_farming.
What Is Traditional Agriculture? (2019). Retrieved November 29, 2019, from https://www.reference.com/business-finance/traditional-agriculture-f3f8ba321ed6c758.
Your Dictionary. (2018). livestock. Retrieved December 4, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/livestock.