Classroom Activities
Students are introduced to this unit with an overview of the Green Revolution and its impact on the environment. This is done via textbook readings and direct instruction. Students then explore the concept of agroecosystems through a variety of more interactive activities.
Driving Question Board (Day 1)
Students are first introduced to the concept of modern industrial agriculture and agroecosystem alternatives by being shown side-by-side pictures. They record what they notice and wonder about the images they see. The goal is for students to recognize, independent of teacher input, that the agroecosystem approach is more in line with natural systems. Keen students will recognize that modern industrial agriculture systems have very little natural biogeochemical cycling and pest control measures, while agroecosystems embrace and harness those natural processes. My role as a teacher is to honor all observations and questions at first, then to steer the conversation towards those key differences. This is done by thoughtful probing of student responses. For example, a student may observe that “there is only one crop planted in a modern industrial agriculture system compared to several in the agroecosystem.” A probing question to that student would be “why might an agroecosystem be designed around multiple plants?” or “what benefits does the modern agriculture system have by just being one crop?” This goes on until students reach a certain level of understanding of the differences.
Once enough of the students have at least a basic understanding, they can begin asking testable questions about what they see - this means no yes-or-no questions. Guiding this activity takes a great deal of patience, and if done early in the year, a lot of scaffolding and modeling. However, students will be well-versed in the activity by the time they reach this unit. They start by writing as many testable questions as they can over three minutes. Students then turn to share with a neighbor and add to their list of questions: partner A records partner B’s questions and partner B records partner A’s questions. Then through thoughtful discussion, partners A and B decide on their top three questions they want answers to. These questions are transferred to a public space in the classroom such as the chalkboard, chart paper, or a shared Google Slide. As a class, we organize and categorize questions by common themes. In this case, questions should fall into categories on nutrient management, pest control, and yield/economic considerations. These categories then become larger testable questions that students can investigate.
Student Inquiry and Model Development (Days 2 and 3)
Once students have established testable questions, they are tasked with finding answers to those questions. In this way, students in my classroom are “doing science,” not just learning science. Students work in small groups to answer individual questions, then share information with the group to build a collective understanding. It is best to have multiple groups working on overlapping questions. This serves two purposes: first, it lowers the chance that inaccurate information gets incorporated into the class’s common understanding of the phenomenon, and second, it fosters discourse between groups that arrive at different conclusions. This helps students practice the art of disagreement, which in addition to being a valuable skill in science is a good skill to have in life. In this case, student groups focus on questions of nutrient management, pest control, and yield/economic considerations. They have access to specific resources posted in our learning management system, including excerpts and the case studies from the Content Objectives section above, the resources cited in this unit, and other relevant internet resources. Students mine and annotate these resources for information related to their specific questions.
As students collect information related to their specific scientific question, they are gaining a piece of the larger puzzle that helps explain, citing evidence, why agroecosystems are more sustainable than modern industrial agriculture. They may also encounter contrary information, especially when it comes to yield and economic considerations. Such information is an important part of the puzzle since many phenomena have multiple facets and cannot be presented one “correct” way. Once students have enough information related to their specific question, they share it first with any other groups focusing on the same question, then the larger class community. After information has been shared, students are tasked with creating a detailed model demonstrating the differences between modern industrial agriculture and agroecosystems (like the ones presented in Figures 1 and 3). Students start by drawing an initial model in their notebook. Students then discuss their model in small groups. This gives them the opportunity to ask questions of one another and seek out additional information where needed. Then they revise/update their model to include any new information or components they may have been missing and write an explanatory caption.
Recommending Agroecosystem Approaches on Penn Farm (Days 4 and 5)
Once students understand the sustainable aspects of agroecosystems, the goal is for them to transfer/apply them to a portion of the school’s farm. This starts with a walking tour of the farm where students make careful observations of elements of either modern industrial agriculture or the agroecosystems we just learned about. Then, after discussing the farm’s operations with the farm manager, students work to identify areas of need that they can address using principles of agroecosystem. The goal is to pitch these improvements to the farm manager and plant science program and then implement any feasible and low-cost sustainable practices. Students can also put together a plan to present to the school board to raise funding for the implementation of any higher cost practices they identified. While the recommendations students make are ultimately up to them and their observations, I anticipate recommendations around improving the farm’s IPM plan and planting more polycultures.
Enrichment Activity (Day 6)
In addition to the environmental benefits of agroecosystem approaches to agriculture, I want students to see that such systems produce high quality food products and sustain local economies in a way that modern industrial agriculture does not. This activity is broken down into two parts. First, students will research the concept of fair-trade coffee and cacao agriculture and its impacts on local economies. They will compare this to the systems that produce typical coffee and cacao products. Activities such as this provide a human connection to science – we aren’t just working to reduce the impacts of humans on the planet, but to improve the living and working conditions for people all over the planet.
The second part of this activity includes blind taste-tests of coffee and cacao products from sustainable and fair-trade agroecosystems in Costa Rica with modern brands. I expect students to initially favor the sugar-laden modern brands over the less processed Costa Rican varieties. However, I hope to use this activity to open a dialogue about the nature of modern food systems and its impact on food quality and consumption behaviors, which will lead us into a separate unit on ecological footprints.
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