For my rotation, I am only required to do two lessons for Agriculture, so that is all I will write about on this page. You are welcome to use these materials if you are also teaching these lessons. I also teach two lessons in Information Tech, but haven't included any plans for them because I follow them pretty exactly as given. They are REALLY good lesson plans, I think. 

Agriculture

Charting Agricultural Careers

First of all, this lesson requires at least one copy of the newest copy of Food and Farm Facts magazine. I ordered a classroom set back in August, and FINALLY received them by mail about a month later. You can order them here. I found them to be worth buying for the class.

Today's Meet

I started off the class by having them login to "Today's  Meet." It's a great little website that allows you to create a temporary chat room. The kids sign in with their actual names. I tell them that I will be printing a copy of the transcript, and anything inappropriate will be noted and I will subtract money from their bank account for every inappropriate comment. That shuts them up, and they do fine. Anyway, I gave each of them the Farm Facts booklet, and told them to look through it--not necessarily in order. Any time they ran across something they didn't know or was interesting to them, they were to type it in to the chat room. It was fun watching them discover new things about agriculture, and this way, they had a reason to find something worth reading because they wanted to share it. 

Agriculture PowerPoint

Using information gleaned from the lesson and the Farm Facts booklet, I created a PowerPoint about Agriculture as a preparation for the next part. It includes a fun clip from Over the Hedge about how humans "Live to eat" that went over very well! It also includes an explanation of different types of graphs. 

This is as far as I got on Day 1. On Day 2 they will actually create graphs and charts.
charting_agriculture.pptx
File Size: 13469 kb
File Type: pptx
Download File

Agriculture Graphing Assignment 
The directions in the assignment tell the students to just create a graphic, but 7th graders need a bit more direction than that! Although the assignment lists websites where they can make graphics online, I chose not to use them because 1) they all require a login and 2) this is a great opportunity to teach graphing in Excel!

I created an Excel starter sheet with data already ready to go. I used data from either the Farm Facts booklet or from the USDA website, so all of it is accurate and about agriculture. They make five different types of graphs. I have the full step by step instructions as well as the starter and key ready to download below. They also will be putting pictures into some of the graphs to make "pictographs" so everything needed for that is also included.
charting_agricultural_careers.zip
File Size: 3150 kb
File Type: zip
Download File
ag_graphs_step_by_step_demonstration.mp4
File Size: 37576 kb
File Type: mp4
Download File
I added a video you can download that takes the student through the assignment step by step. Really great for kids who are absent. It's a silent video--just goes through the whole thing. It's about 6 minutes long.

Find Your Future Career

This lesson had a lot of resources to draw from, but I had a hard time turning it into a cohesive lesson. There were a few things I left out--mainly the 7 bags full of stuff. Apparently you can order these bags from the Ag department, but I did not know this, and even if I had I don't think they are worth the expense for the small role they play in the lesson. Here is what I did:
  1. Discussion about natural resources and what they are. I mentioned video games like Civilization and board games like Settlers of Katan and asked them to tell me what the basic resources were in games like that. 
  2. I went over the "Consider this" section from the lesson plan, talking about pay for minimum wage. I just wrote the numbers on the board.
  3. I had numbers out that the kids picked when they walked in. Each kid got 1-2 numbers. (The previous discussion I actually did the day before after finishing the graph assignment above, so I started day 3 with them picking their numbers.)
  4. I ordered the Job cards, which were TOTALLY worth it. Great jobs in Ag that I had no idea existed! I handed out the jobs according to the number they got, telling the kids that the numbers they picked are a bit like lottery number because some are worth money (CTE KASH) and some aren't. I gave them 5-10 minutes to read over their job(s), look it up online for the pay, and discuss it with the person next to them. 
  5. Then we did the activity in the lesson with the family at the grocery store, and the kid had to recognize it was their job and they got paid KASH for getting it. Then we did a few more from the matching assignment--I just read them out and paid kids for recognizing their job. 
  6. In the lesson it talks about a "venn diagram" with yarn but doesn't explain it very well AT ALL. I drew mine on the board, finding a way to make it so that every combination of Soil, Water, Plants, and Animals was possible. My first class wrote the name of their jobs on my magnet strips, and then they put it up on the board in the square they felt it belonged. That was pretty awesome.
  7. Then we were out of time! 
Mrs. Funny Business