From Worms to Salsa -- Teacher Helps Students Understand the Source of Food

Do you know where your food comes from? If not, the students in Paula Marquez’s sixth grade class at Backman Elementary School in Salt Lake City may be able to help. Marquez and her students spent the past year studying science, social studies, reading, math and healthy lifestyles using agriculture in the classroom.

Marquez received Utah State University Extension’s Agriculture in the Classroom (AITC) Excellence in Teaching about Agriculture Award for 2009. Additionally, Marquez was selected as one of five national winners for the award and will be recognized in June 2009 by the United States Department of Agriculture and the national AITC Consortium at the National AITC Conference in St. Louis, Mo.

Marquez said using the content of agriculture to teach core subjects to her students is easy — she simply shares her background and knowledge of farming and gardening she learned while growing up in Montana.

“I believe these hands-on experiences make a person hard working, strong and responsible,” Marquez said. “Helping my students understand agriculture will help them to be better citizens.”

With a classroom rich in ethnic and cultural diversity, Marquez had the opportunity to introduce new agriculture-related foods, vocabulary and stories to her sixth grade students.

Students drafted parents as volunteers, and together assembled a donated greenhouse. After studying the requirements for planting vegetables, flowers and herbs, the students watched plants grow and conducted scientific experiments with decomposing kale and microorganisms. Worms became the classroom “mascots,” and students fed table scraps to the worms in an indoor worm bin to make compost for the greenhouse plants.

While waiting for the plants to grow, the children learned to can fresh salsa. Science and agricultural concepts were integrated by using the process of pressure-cooking to kill any microorganisms present in the salsa. Students made root beer and discussed the physical and chemical changes that took place.

The story of “The Little Red Hen,” unfamiliar to most of Marquez’s English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners, became the basis of a bread-making lesson. The students ground wheat into flour, baked bread and even “churned” butter for the final taste-testing of the homemade bread. Books about agriculture were invaluable in teaching the students new vocabulary and increasing their interests in a variety of agriculture-related subjects.

“Prior to our study of agriculture, I am certain that few students realized their dinner came from the farm,” Marquez said. “However, after all of the lessons about agriculture, they are able to articulate the process their food went through to end up on their plates.

“An added benefit was the attitude adjustment in my students. As a service-learning project, they are collecting pennies for leukemia patients. They want to work together and help others — this is the spirit that working, planting and learning has instilled in my students.”

Marquez gathered many ideas and resources as a student in the Food, Land & People online course offered through Utah Agriculture in the Classroom. She used lesson plans and other course resources designed to integrate agriculture with the state core curriculum.

For more information about Utah Agriculture in the Classroom or the National Agriculture in the Classroom conference, visit the Web site.