A multitude of skills are needed for each job set. If you are working with livestock, then it may be helpful to have a skill in calculating feed rations. If you farm crops, then checking maturity of corn would be a beneficial skill. But there is a commonality between all careers, especially those that alight with agriculture, food, and natural resources, and that is literacy skills. Having these skills of reading and writing contribute to communication and the understanding of agricultural processes. Reading in agriculture is crucial to understanding important information that is needed to perform tasks, like reading a grower guide or a report from your veterinarian. Writing is another important skill that allows those involved in agriculture to convey their messages professionally and with peers. Literacy is key to building a foundation when it comes to ag education. While these skills are necessary in the agriculture industry, they are equally applicable in other fields . Regardless of the path each student decides to take after their time in ag classes, they literacy skills they develop will aid them in their successes.
Reading:
Consistency
By providing consistent expectations for reading with students, they are able to expand their understanding and confidence within agriculture literacy. These expectations may be daily readings of our classroom agenda or weekly readings of current events in agriculture. Providing opportunities to expand their reading capabilities daily is key to expanding increasing literacy.
Diversity
Allowing reading to occur in a variety of avenues lends students to become more diverse in their reading abilities. Allowing students to engage with text through magazines, novels, articles, textbooks, or even instruction manuals can emulate how diverse reading experiences occur outside of the classroom and even outside of agriculture, preparing students for like in and out of education.
Purpose
Facilitating learning experiences can be supplemented with different forms of reading. There are different purposes for introducing, obtaining, and analyzing information. Reading comes with a multitude of purposes that promotes learning and expanding literacy development.
Writing:
Consistency
With practice comes learning, and maintaining consistent expectations for writing can greatly enhance those abilities of the students. Having regular expectations and presence for writing assignments is crucial to developing skills in writing and literacy.
Simplicity
Writing does not have to be presented in the forms of essays and reports. While those are still important forms of learning and developing literacy skills, often times simple forms of writing can promote developing that skill in a less intimidating way for students. Simple writing can come in the form of short responses, poems, or even jokes!
Acceptance
Promoting writing through leniency in evaluation can increase the development of students’ abilities. Limiting focus on grammar and mechanics and shifting to importance on content can increase students’ confidence, therefore encouraging them to grow in their writing abilities.
Reading:
Assigned Reading:
Food Waste Scenarios & Finding Value in Food Waste: https://agclassroom.org//matrix/lesson/604/
Facilitation:
Students will actively read a food waste scenario and hypothesize what they suggest is the correct solution to managing the food waste. This experience introduces the content of livestock nutrition to the students and creates a space to begin closing the gap in knowledge on where food waste goes.
During this reading experiences, encourage students to write down their hypotheses, collaborate with other students, then present their scenarios and ideas to the class on how they each scenario could solve their food waste problem.
Students can then read about finding the value in food waste. From this reading, students will learn how these certain agricultural products turn their waste into feed for livestock.
Upon completing this reading, students can reflect on what they learned about livestock nutrition and food waste. Students can annotate the value (carbohydrates, sugars, microbes, digestibility) that the different food wastes provided.
Writing:
Writing Prompt:
“Write a definition of being a leader, in and outside of agriculture, food, and natural resources.”
Facilitation:
During a unit on leadership in AFNR, students will be prompted with this question to gauge their understanding on leadership qualities and practices.
Students will have roughly 1.5 minutes to write their definitions using their prior knowledge and experiences. Students will share their definitions with a group of 3-4.
Groups will then have 1.5 minutes to rewrite their collaborative definitions, having each student record the definition in their notes.
Each group will share their definitions by writing them on the board.
Facilitate a discussion commonalities and differences between the definitions.
As a class, form a new definition and have students record the new definition in their notes. The definitions can be reflected upon during and after the unit on leadership in AFNR.
As a lifelong learner in the worlds of agriculture and education, I strive to set similar goals for myself that I send for my students. I intend to incorporate literacy development to better my teaching and my abilities to communicate with others and comprehend new findings. To grow my skills in agriculture literacy, I will personally invest time to reading and writing. I expect to accomplish this goal by writing lesson plans, articles, and content to promote the learning of my students. With writing these pieces comes different components of research, and with that comes reading. Attending professional development events and coordinating with English and Language Arts educators, is another path I will take to developing the ways in which I can enhance my student’s literacy skills. Another I will have access to is the National Center for Agricultural Literacy. Formed by the USDA, Utah State University, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the National Agriculture in the Classroom, the Center Ag Literacy collaborates to promote literacy in agriculture by providing resources, research, workshops to continue educator growth in teaching literacy in STEM and agriculture.