LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE

Your Name: Kelsey Hamilton

Title of Lesson: Agriculture and Ecosystems
Grade: 5

STANDARDS
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.5.7
Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or to
solve a problem efficiently.
5-LS2 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
LESSON SUMMARY/OVERVIEW
This lesson will teach students where their food comes from and the connections it has to agriculture, the ecosystem and the
environment. The students will be researching food back to the soil and finding the impacts the food has on our planet. The lesson
plan offers students time for interaction between classmates and individual work and reflection. The lesson plan begins with an overall
essential questions, moves into research of food and end with a presentation on the students findings and research.


OBJECTIVES
Students will be able to:
Reflect on the connections between the food they eat, agriculture and ecosystems
Describe the health, environmental, social and economic problems in agriculture
Work collaboratively to assess the problems facing agriculture and suggest plans to address them
Compare and contrast industrial, organic and sustainable approaches to agriculture

ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION
Students will create an informative poster to share with the class. The students poster will include:
Connections between food and the ecosystem/environment
List problems that occur in the health of people and animals, environmental issues raised and social problems that result from
agriculture
Choose one problem facing agriculture and address solutions to the problem
Present that poster at the front of the class to peers


PREREQUISITE KNOWLEDGE
Students will need to know what agriculture is and what environment surrounds that agriculture. They need to be able to find key
information in formal text and how to record that information in a visually attractive manner to share with the class. Students will be
reminded of different forms of agriculture and the types of environment that we have on planet Earth.


MATERIALS
-Computer
-Articles that address agriculture and its affect on the environment
-Pencils, pens, markers
-Glue
-Paper
-Library (for research)

VOCABULARY/KEY WORDS
Agriculture- the science or practice of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to
provide food, wool, and other products
Sustainable- able to be maintained at a certain rate or level.
Organic- of, relating to, or derived from living matter
Industrial- of, relating to, or characterized by industry

TEACHING PROCEDURES
Procedural Steps (Step by step instructions for teaching the lesson):
1. Teacher will ask the class if agriculture has more positive or negative impacts on the ecosystem and environment.
Teacher will ask:
- Does the use of agriculture help people survive?
- Is agriculture good or bad for animals?
- Do you think agriculture harms the environment?
- Would the ecosystem be helped is agriculture could be scaled to community sizes rather than on a world scale?
2. Students will watch a short video about the effects factory farming has on the environment (Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8hxGe5hA-g)
3. Teacher will ask students to talk with the people next to them about the different things that agriculture can do to our planet
and land.
Teacher will ask:
-Do animals paly a part in agriculture, or is it just plants?
- Does farming take over a lot or little land?
-Can large farms that provide for distant locations be harmful to the environment?
4. Students will go to the board to record what impacts they think the agriculture brings to the environment.
Examples:
- Animals can get hurt with agriculture
- People can easily be fed with big farms
- If people made more of their own food the world would have less ecosystem damage
- Crops that get disease can hurt people or provide no food
5. Teacher will explain that students will be working with a partner to research how a certain food is grown (from the farm or
soil) and how it connects to the ecosystem around it.
6. Students will go to the computer lab to research the different agriculture in the United States.
7. Students will be asked to record their finding in their notebooks and they will be creating a poster with their information to
share with the class.
8. Students will create a poster that shows the impacts of agriculture and one problem they found interesting regarding
agriculture and the ecosystem/environment and a list of suggestions to fix the problem.
9. These posters will be standard poster size and must include some kind of image (either drawn or printed), state ONE problem
they found with agriculture environments around the world and at least 3 suggestions they have come up with fix the
problem.
10. Students will share the poster with the class.


RESOURCES
Agriculture and Ecosystems. (n.d.). Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Retrieved April 13, 2014, from
http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/teaching-the-food-system/curriculum/agriculture_and_ecosystem

Factory farming and its effect on the environment. (2012, June 16). YouTube. Retrieved April 13, 2014, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8hxGe5hA-g

WAYS OF THINKING CONNECTION
This lesson plan teaches students to use their values and futures thinking.
The students will learn values thinking when learning what food they should choose because of the different effects the food and
growing and making it have on the ecosystem and environment. The students will be directly finding research that will help them learn
how their choice can affect others.
The students will be learning to use futures thinking during this lesson by finding out the outcomes of their food on the plant. They
will learn about the negative impacts the currents agriculture system is having on our plant and homes. Students will have the chance
to learn about how they can change these current problems and make a difference themselves.