Curriculum Toolkit
Over the years, we have honed in on priority curricular units for every grade level, preschool through 12th grade, that build on each other and provide a meaningful food education for the students we work with.
This Toolkit is the compilation of these units, along with their related teaching standards, activities, and assessment tools. We are constantly adding to this site, so please check in again soon for updates.
We designed this curriculum framework to help our students grasp the following key concepts by the time they graduate from high school:
Feel confident in making healthy food choices
Appreciate the farming profession
Know that everyone can grow food
Understand the connection between healthy soil, healthy plants, and healthy people
Recognize the difference between the industrial and local food systems
8th Grade: Introduction to Food Advocacy
In eighth grade,
students are developing their roles as food advocates. With a strong foundation of understanding of food systems, now is the time for students to take an active role in making change.
In the fall, students explore the colonial food system. During the winter, they participate in seed-saving while researching the seed industry and the industrial food system. In the spring, they work in the garden as plant breeders, making changes to our environment one seed at a time.
Connections to IGS Learning Goals:
Appreciate the farming profession
Know that everyone can grow food
Understand the connection between healthy soil, healthy plants and healthy people
Recognize the difference between the industrial and local food systems
Feel confident in making healthy eating choices
Essential Questions:
Where does food come from?
What is food culture?
How does history inform our food choices?
How do our food choices affect our communities?
Lessons
Colonial "Chopped" Cooking Challenge
Local vs. Industrial
Field Trips
Gleaning @ Morning Glory Farm, Whippoorwhill Farm, or other island farms
MS-LS4-5
Synthesize and communicate information about artificial selection, or the ways in which humans have changed the inheritance of desired traits in organisms
MS-LS3-1
Develop and use a model to describe that structural changes to genes (mutations)may or may not result in changes to proteins, and if there are changes to proteins
there may be harmful, beneficial, or neutral changes to traits.
MS-LS3-2
Develop and use a model to describe how asexual reproduction results in offspring with identical genetic information and sexual reproduction results in offspring with genetic variation. Compare and contrast advantages and disadvantages of asexual and sexual reproduction.
MS-LS1-5
Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms
MS-LS1-7
Use informational text to describe that food molecules, including carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, are broken down and rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support cell growth and/or release of energy.
MS-ESS3-5
Examine and interpret data to describe the role that human activities have played in causing the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration
Analyze the purpose of information presented in diverse media formats and evaluate the motives (e.g., social, commercial, political) behind its presentation
Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content
Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners on grade 8 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly
Farms
Local vs. Industrial
Nutrition/Cooking
Local vs. Industrial
Food Systems
Colonial "Chopped" Cooking Challenge
Local vs. Industrial
8th Grade Book List
Food Rules
- Food Rules, by Michael Pollan
Local vs. Industrial
- Will Allen and the Growing Table, by Jacqueline Briggs-Martin
- Alice Waters and the Trip to Delicious, by Jacqueline Briggs-Martin