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Curriculum
All Ages | Elementary | Secondary
All Ages
Taste Testing — University of Minnesota Extension — Gives general information, tips, and a sample guide for offering taste testing of foods within schools. Part of the Minnesota Toolkit for School Foodservice.
Sustainable Agriculture Resources and Programs for K-12 Youth — Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education — This 16-page (PDF) guide to sustainable agriculture-oriented educational opportunities for schoolchildren features more than 50 programs and curricula nationwide, from “Growing Minds,” a program linking the garden and agriculture in Appalachia, to “French Fries and the Food System,” a year-round curriculum focusing on ways youth can better understand land and local food systems. Updated in 2011. Available only online.
Center for Ecoliteracy — A variety of instructional tools to assist teachers as they plan and implement sustainable curriculum. They include books, discussion guides, resource listings, lessons, professional development seminars, and other events designed for educators.
Rethinking School Lunch: A Visual Guide to Linking Food, Culture, Health and the Environment — A guide to developing your own farm to school related curriculum. Discover how an integrated curriculum and enriched school environment link student learning and well-being and enhance student understanding about the natural world.
Big Ideas: Linking Food, Culture, Health, and the Environment — provides a conceptual framework for integrated learning in these important areas in K–12 classrooms. Big Ideas helps students and educators explore questions, such as: Where does our food come from and how it is produced? How does culture shape our food choices and behavior? What is the relationship between food choices and health? And what are the links between our food and the environment?
Food for Thought Mapping Curriculum: Connecting Minnesota Geography, Agriculture and Communities — Minnesota Agriculture in the Classroom and the Minnesota Alliance for Geographic Education - Lessons and maps are designed to enable students and others to locate themselves amidst the grand mosaic of fields, processing plants, wind towers, ethanol plants, power lines and roads in Minnesota.
Minnesota Agriculture in the Classroom — Minnesota Department of Agriculture
Farm to School in the Classroom — Maryland Department of Agriculture
My American Farm — American Farm Bureau Foundation - My American Farm is an online educational game that lets students learn about agriculture, where food comes from and how those products get from the farm to their dinner plate.
Elementary
Linking Food & the Environment (LiFE) Curriculum Series – Teacher’s College, Columbia University – A research-based science and nutrition curriculum, the LiFE Curriculum Series addresses both a major science education goal to promote scientific literacy for all Americans and major national health goals for people to eat healthful diets and lead physically active lives. LiFE uses the study of food and food systems to address national science standards in the areas of science as inquiry; life sciences; and unifying concepts such as understanding systems as interacting parts and understanding the flow of energy and matter through systems.
- Growing Food (grades 4, 5, or 6): How does nature provide us with food?
- Farm to Table & Beyond (grades 5 or 6): What is the system that gets food from farm to table, and how does this system affect the environment?
- Choice, Choice & Change (grades 6, 7, or 8): How can we use scientific evidence to help us maintain energy balance?
Got Veggies? (grades 2 & 3) — Wisconsin Department of Health Services – Got Veggies is a garden-based nutrition education curriculum created with the goal of getting children to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. Got Veggies? features seven full lesson plans that are aligned with Wisconsin's Model Academic Standards for Nutrition, Health, Science, and other related subjects. A series of shorter garden-based activities are also included, as well as fun recipes and helpful tips for cooking and eating in the garden. This curriculum provides an all around great way to nurture students’ interest in growing and eating fresh fruits and vegetables!
Cooking with Kids — Motivates and empowers elementary school students to develop healthy eating habits through hands-on learning with fresh, affordable foods from diverse cultural traditions. Through cooking classes and tasting classes, students explore varieties of foods using all of their senses, have fun, and exercise choice.
Linking Food, Plants and People — Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch Lessons — Connecting students to the natural world though food represents an educational opportunity to address the dual problems of rising rates of diet related illnesses and environmental degradation. Therefore, one of the primary goals of these lessons is to teach students about the natural processes that produce our food. More specifically, these lessons focus on such themes as the nutrient cycle, decomposition, plant development, plant anatomy, and sustainable agriculture.
Junior Master Gardener — AgriLife Extension Service, Texas A&M University System
Healthy Foods from Healthy Soils: A Hands-on Resource for Educators — Elizabeth Patten and Kathy Lyons, Tilbury House Publishers.
Secondary
Nourish Middle School Curriculum Guide — Center for Ecoliteracy — A rich set of resources to open a meaningful conversation about food and sustainability. The materials contain a viewing guide, six learning activities, action projects, student handouts, bibliography, and glossary. Nourish curriculum aligns with national curriculum standards and benchmarks of the National Council for the Social Studies, National Research Council, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Committee on National Health Education Standards.
Discovering our Food System — Department of Horticulture, Cornell University — is an interdisciplinary, community-based exploration of the people and processes that shape our food system. Rooted in the places we live, eat, work, learn, and play, DFS will help youth better understand what the food system means to them, how it affects their community and their health, and ways in which they can influence the food system.
Towards a Sustainable Agriculture — Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, University of Wisconsin, Madison - The curriculum is divided into six different modules: an introductory module and five more narrowly focused modules. Each module is designed to be taught in as little as 5 hours of class time (or one week), though if you choose to use all the material in the module, it will take longer.
The Whole Plate: A Return to Real Food — A four unit nutrition and food based curriculum based on work done at Youth Initiative High School in Viroqua, WI. This curriculum could be adopted in a Family and Consumer Science class. Explore the science and health of foods from a whole systems perspective.
French Fries and the Food System: A Year Round Curriculum Connecting Youth with Farming and Food — The Food Project — This agricultural curriculum features powerful, original lessons written and developed by The Food Project's growers and educators. Organized by season, the material teaches youth how to develop a deep understanding of and appreciation for the land and local food systems. Lessons can be done both indoors and outdoors and can be easily adapted by instructors working in school-based plots, urban food lots, and environmental education programs.
Food for Thought Curriculum — College of Agricultural Sciences, Oregon State University — The curriculum incorporates reading comprehension and hands-on activities for science, social studies, and language arts, all linked to the state’s educational benchmarks. 20 activities, can be completed during one class period; they are flexible enough to fit into existing lesson plans.
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