Designing the school garden will require Math, ELA, and Science skills with Scientific Method being used as a foundation. Students will create a school garden as a result of the work they preloaded into the activity. Finally, students will decide if the school garden has an improvements needed for future growth or more growth.

Students will explore hybridization, selective breeding and genetic engineering through a jigsaw approach. Then they will go through a series of articles that help them formulate their own opinions about genetic manipulation. Lastly, they will debate the merits of genetic manipulation as a class.

In this activity students will make a “growing” bracelet and learn about the basic elements plants need to grow and thrive. Includes activity instructions, extension activities, songs, and additional reading list. NGSS: K-LS1-1, 1-LS1-1, K-ESS2-2 (extension activity)CCSS: L.K.5, SL.K.1, SL.K.5, SL.1.4Social Sciences: Partially meets 3.13Time: 30 minutesMaterials: "One Bean" book, chenille stems/pipe cleaners, and pony beads (yellow, brown, blue, clear, green, and red.

How can we Design Cattle to Better Meet Human Needs?

In this high school Storyline unit on genetics and heredity, students are introduced to ‘SuperCows’. As they explore the vast variety of cattle breeds, students discover that cattle are specialized for different purposes and while similar, the ‘SuperCows’ are clearly unique. Students wonder what caused this diversity and specificity which leads to investigations about the role of inheritance, DNA and proteins.

In this lesson students will learn about the basic soils components, importance of soils,main ideas in land evaluation including: texture, depth, slope and erosion and career possibilities.

This is lesson 4 of 4. Students will be presenting and evaluating their apps for cell phones that will provide farmers with the opportunity to learn how different irrigation methods work depending on soil type.

This lesson is part 2 of 4. After learning about the food safety continuum students will learn protocols that assist the farmer/rancher to do their part to ensure a safe and healthy food supply. This lesson covers what farm biosecurity is and the practices that make a farm safe from biological hazards.

Human activities have significantly altered the biosphere, sometimes damaging or destroying natural habitats and causing the extinction of other species. But changes to Earth’s environments can have different impacts (negative and positive) for different living things. Typically, as human populations and per-capita consumption of natural resources increase, so do the negative impacts on Earth, unless the activities and technologies involved are engineered otherwise. In this lesson, students track land use change from a ‘natural’ reference state (1830) to pre-WWII (1938) to the current time (2013), develop predictions, and use qualitative or quantitative data to evaluate the impacts of land use change. Created by Mark Hammond, Tyler Bassett, Shaun Davis 2016, updated 2017 with support from the K-12 Partnership, an outreach program of the Long-term Ecological Research Program at Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan State University

What do Prairie Chickens Need in Order to Survive Today's Prairie?

This middle school unit covering ecosystems, animal behavior and symbiosis was developed through the Storyline approach. Middle school students will be figuring out why prairie chickens have a very unique dance and understand the role cows play to help ensure the dance takes place. Using this approach, students engage in science concepts to help ensure the survival of the prairie chicken.

Students will model the atomic structure of common elements found in soils, determine an atom's valence electrons, draw Lewis electron dot diagrams, and discuss the basic principles of element bonding.

The OBI system is open source, collaborative and distributed.
Our focus is on low cost and rapidly-built structures that are modular, ecological, and energy efficient.

***LOGIN REQUIRED*** This lesson will focus on the process of photosynthesis. It will review the steps in the process, the resources needed to make the process happen, and the results. Students will interact with the steps in the process through pictures that help make memory connections.

In this lesson students will investigate the physical properties of matter, learn 4 important physical properties of soil commonly tested in agriculture production and rediscover the 3 components of soil used for the USDA soil classification system.

***LOGIN REQUIRED*** This lesson is designed as a basic introduction into botany, and understanding the parts and functions of plants. After completion of this lesson students will have identified the main parts of plants including: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruit - as well as their respective functions. This lesson is geared for a 90 minute block-schedule However, activities can and should be modified to fit within other instructional periods.

This lesson is part 2 in a 6 part unit on Biotechnology use in agriculture. It sets the foundation for the culminating project by teaching students about germination and the factors that effect germination. Students will be introduced to the factors that effect germination and then perform an experiment that allows them to evaluate germination rates.

During this lesson students will be exposed the requirements of plants for growth. Students will have the opportunity to become familiar with each requirement for plant growth, and what effect that requirement has on the plant.

A 2nd grade STEM unit on biodiversity. Students will learn about habitats and their biotic and abiotic components and needs to create and implement a plan/device to increase the biodiversity of the urban school garden.

This lesson highlights the types of tillage methods commonly employed in agriculture and draws a correlation between the type of method and the physical properties of the soil.

Welcome to Promoting STEM Through Literature by the MiSTEM Network of the Northwestern Lower Michigan Region.  We are excited to build from the great work of Judy Bowling and Kerry Guiliano to bring you more STEM challenges, SEL discussion prompts, and career connections that you can use with your students. These lessons were created in collaboration by Danelle Brostrom, Sam Walters, Drea Weiner, and Shelly VanderMeulen with funds from a MiSTEM grant awarded by the Michigan Department of Education. If you are interested in learning more about the original project, please visit their website at https://www.stemandlit.com/Share your feedback and comments with us as we continue to add more books and lessons. 

Students will build on previous lessons to design their own agriscience fair experiment. These experiments can be used in a class, school, or FFA contest. This experiment is Lesson 4 of 4.