Friday, June 25, 10:00-10:50 am

Select your workshop when you register! This year participants will have the opportunity to select their first choice and an alternate for each workshop session time slot when registering. Every effort will be made to provide you with your top choices. Admittance tickets for each session will be in your registration packet. The earlier you register, the better your chances of getting your desired workshop sessions. 

Presenters have designated grade levels for their workshop sessions.  Frequently, the ideas and lessons shared can be adjusted up or down depending on the age of the group you are educating.  The grade levels are merely suggestions and you are welcome to attend any session.  Please understand that the program may change due to circumstances beyond our control which may necessitate session changes.     

#1  Days of Taste

Grades 3-5

Riva Eichner Kahn, American Institute of Wine & Food

This session shares a discovery-based program, funded and developed by the American Institute of Wine & Food, with two major goals – to teach children where their food originates and to help them realize for themselves that farm-fresh food is not just healthy, but tastes good too.  Students interact with professional chefs and farmers to experience eating various foods, to learn how food travels from farm to table and to prepare a harvest salad and dressing with ingredients “balanced” to their personal preference.  Participants will leave the session with resources and hands on ideas to help students become more adventuresome, healthy eaters!

#2  Gardening: An Effective Tool to Teach
     All Subjects  (also offered in Session 6)

  All Levels 

KLisa Gaskalla, Florida AITC 

Attend this workshop to learn how to use schoolyard and classroom gardens to teach all subjects, including agriculture, language arts, math, nutrition, science and social studies.  Florida Agriculture in the Classroom has developed a guide called “Gardening for Grades” that educates teachers and agriculture industry volunteers on how to develop gardens as an effective teaching tool for any subject.  Workshop goers will receive a free copy of “Gardening for Grades” and instruction on how teachers and volunteers can gain support from school administrators, locate grant money to pay for these gardens and use the garden as a teaching tool. It also includes guidance on how to plant different types of gardens such as literature gardens, biofuel gardens, edible gardens and others.

#3  What's in a Cookie?  (also offered in Session 6)

    Grades 3-8 

Staci Disney-Walker, Vermillion County Farm Bureau/Illinois AITC

Kids love to eat cookies, but do they know what ingredients are in a cookie or where those ingredients are grown or produced?  We will travel the globe in search of the ingredients needed to make chocolate chip cookies. Using the book, All in Just One Cookie by Susan Goodman, a series of lesson plans have been produced and gathered to study each of the ingredients. Social studies, English, math and science lessons will take us from Vermont to Hawaii, from Mexico to West Africa and other points of interest along the way. Do you know what’s in a cookie?

#4  Agri-Tales  (also offered in Session 6)

Grades K-4

Tonya Wible, PA Friends of Ag Foundation

Since agricultural concepts are not always front and foremost in the classroom curriculum, educators interested in incorporating agriculture need to find basic skills (sequence, compare & contrast, read to be entertained or informed, write to persuade) that are taught and then give them an “ag” twist.  This session shares some ways that agriculture can connect with fairy tales, folk tales, and nursery rhymes, thereby increasing the opportunity for agricultural concepts to be taught.  Re-meet Jack and the Beanstalk, the Three Little Pigs, Humpty Dumpty and many more characters in lessons that can provide a real “AG” twist!

#5  At Home on the Range with GoogleEarth
     (also offered in Session 6)

 Grades 6-12

Lyndi Perry, Utah AITC

Discover the power of GoogleEarth to explore your states agricultural land. This presentation uses GoogleEarth imaging technology to demonstrate how historical photos and today’s images can be merged to tell an agricultural land’s story and perhaps predict its future. Specifically, this presentation will contrast Forest Service photographs of rangeland, dated between the 1890s and 1960s, with updated photographs and GoogleEarth’s explorative landscapes. The information and methods presented can easily be adapted to highlight environmental issues across the globe, putting them into an interactive, visually-based approach and geographical perspective that can have a major impact on many types of learners.

#6  Ag-Expectations at the Fair

All Levels

Becky Brashear, The Great Frederick Fair, Maryland

For years Frederick County has partnered with the local school administration and classroom teachers to create a fair that educates the fair-going public and provides them with more than rides, food and entertainment.  Come learn about adaptable themes and ideas for your local, county, regional or state fair.  Successful programs to be included are:  City Streets-Country Roads (ag awareness exhibit), Birth to Blue Ribbon, Spuddy Buddy, Let’s Grow a Pizza, “One Foot, Two Foot”,  and “R-U-N2-Ag?”.  This session will fill you with many new and exciting ideas and themes for a variety of venues.

#7  Summer Science: "Getting Down on the Farm"

  Grades K-6 

Lindsey Keith-Vincent & Diane Madden, Louisiana Tech University IDEA Place

Summer Science: Getting Down on the Farm resulted from an idea that was developed from a 2008 Louisiana Farm Bureau "Ag in the Classroom" workshop.  Partners in the summer endeavor included the Louisiana Tech University's Department of Agricultural Sciences and Farm Bureau.  The summer camp for Kindergarten through 6th graders, offered through The IDEA Place Math and Science Center, provided hands-on activities and real-world Ag-Science experiences. This session will discuss the program, the activities, and the networking related to this project and how to start a similar partnership and academic camp.

#8  Cancelled

#9  Exploring the Unknown through Experiments
      (also offered in Session 6)

Grades K-5

Tom Zinnen, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Experience science through experiments based on food; encourage students to develop their skills of expressing and testing ideas; test-drive activities geared to be intriguing, affordable, quick and shareable at home.  Try your hand and your ingenuity at “Which Makes Better Bubbles:  Skim Milk or Whole?”;  follow-up with a parallel exploration of three colors of popcorn; and use an ice-cube tray for your first foray into chemistry by comparing water and vinegar mixed with baking soda and baking powder, sugar and flour, and cornstarch and salt.

#10  Technology, Agriculture & Picture Books

  Grades K-8 

Lola Knutson, Wahpeton Public Schools, Central Elementary

This presentation combines the use of picture books as models for writing, technology like the SMART board or Eno board, and agriculture.  Reading skills such as main idea, inference, cause and effect, etc. will be highlighted as agriculturally related terminology and products are the focus for patterned writing. Modeling and special techniques will be done using an ENO board or SMART board.