Progress 05/15/23 to 05/14/24

Outputs
Target Audience:The ACRE 2.0 program targets K-12 teachers from districts across Mississippi who seek to increase their own agricultural literacy and that of their students. Teachers must be employed at an elementary, middle or high school in Mississippi. Recruitment efforts included targeting teachers by contacting school district administration and through social media. Thirty in-service teachers applied to participate in the 2023-2024 Cohort 1 of the ACRE 2.0 Professional Development program. Out of those 30 applicant teachers, 28 participated in the June 2023 4-day institute and 26 participated in the September 2023 follow-up day at MSU. Changes/Problems:ACRE 2.0 in June 2023 was a 4-day professional development institute on the MSU campus. Shortening the institute from previous ACRE 10-day institutes and from the planned one-week summer learning experience resulted in a much larger level of participation. Focus was given to applicants from the target districts and recruitment was statewide. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has provided numerous training and professional development opportunities in the form of guest lecturers, field excursions, and materials/activities for classroom use, all of which provide authentic experiences. Additionally, participants met university faculty from various disciplines and departments which afforded numerous opportunities for mentorships. During this reporting period, the ACRE project has included: Speakers Topics presented by various university faculty include: Food Safety Practices; Mississippi Commodities; Embryo Development and Growth; Farm to Fork; Food Preservation/Processing/Chemistry; Food Sensory Evaluation; Fermentation; What's in a Label?; Navigating Food Claims; Food Deserts; Meat Chemistry and Cuisine; HATCH Project/Poultry; Literacy strategies (e.g., Meaning Prediction through Think Pair Share; Meaning Predictions chart; Jamboard; RAFT; Story Impressions; Written Conversation; Admit/Exit Slips; Student Friendly Vocabulary Explanations; What do you see?; Write About; Found Poem; LINK strategy; I used to think... Now I think... strategy; Carousel; science hero trading cards; Possible Sentences; Quick Writes; NEWSELA articles at varying lexile levels) are integrated with Ag science content throughout the institute. SEL resources: books (Be Kind; I Am Kind; Free Lunch; How'd That Get into my Lunchbox?; and Maddi's Fridge); videos (Food deserts of Memphis, You Tube video, The Guardian; The Hungriest State, MSU Films) Training and Professional Development Materials include: Texts: How Did That Get Into My Lunchbox?; Maddi's Fridge; Free Lunch; Chicks and Chickens; Ag newspapers from Ag Foundation (e.g., Farming Practices; Poultry; Soybeans), Non-books: Ag Mags; Ag career posters, glow germ gel, Chick Life Cycle Exploration Set; baby chicks hatching video; Training and Professional Development Field excursions include: MSU Dairy Farm; MSU Meat Lab; the Leveck Animal Research Center (specifically the poultry unit) Formative assessment data of the project's processes were collected routinely through end-of-day reflections, institute mid-point, and end checks, and informal conversations with participants throughout. Project leaders are responsive to the needs and inquiries of the participants. End of institute ideas and requests for continuing learning were also collected to inform the agendas/content of the two academic follow-up days. Request for topics of interest for the fall 2023 follow-up day was made in June 2023. Request for topics of interest for the spring 2024 follow-up day was made in September 2023. Teachers were able to explore career pathways in food, poultry, and Ag science during the institute and fall follow-up day. During lunch panels, teachers heard from representatives from Cal Maine Foods. Further, the field trips also allowed the teachers to learn more about career pathways in agriculture and food science. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Results from the first year of the ACRE 2.0 project have thus far been disseminated to communities of interest. Teachers have reported: "I have shared it across my district at the local Career Tech Day for 3rd and 4th graders. I [shared] the egg posters, and the egg development to discuss different areas of agriculture. ... I have discussed and shown otherag teachers in the state the information we learned and some of the resources we received. I showed them how I used them in my class ..."; "I have ... shared information with a couple of my colleagues in my same grade band. It's been a fantastic opportunity to break down the key features and benefits, encouraging my colleagues to explore the platform. I even convinced 2 of my colleagues to sign up for the Farm to Classroom Professional Development. They participated in it and loved it. Like me, they were unaware of how to integrate agriculture into their lessons until after the class. It's been a rewarding experience so far, seeing the enthusiasm grow as more educators get on board."; "... I have talked to other teachers about how we made sausage at our last ACRE 2.0 class. We were able to cook and share sausage with our co-workers during school."; from classroom lessons, "Students learned that all goods must begin with raw materials. They learned that farmers play an important role in making sure goods are available for us to buy in the store. In my classroom we completed the lesson by reading Thank a Farmer by Maria Gianferrari. I also shared some videos with the students on how farmers produce different things and how they are processed. The videos featured the soybean process from planting, growing, to harvest, and cotton from planting in the fieldcleaning,processing, separating seeds and hulls forcattle consumption, shipping to farms, and cotton storage at thecotton gin in bags for shipping. The students also were able to see the machinery associated with the process.In the end students learned that there are many different steps that a product must go through before theend productsarrive on the store shelf." Two ACRE 2.0 teachers shared ACRE resources during a session at the statewide Mississippi Science Teachers Association (MSTA) Conference on October 22, 2023. Electronic resources from the session were shared on the MSTA website after the conference. Presentation title and authors: Lemley, S.M., Clary, R.M., Marlow, T., Bright, T., Reed, K., & Tucker, D. (2023). Integrating Agriculture and Active Literacy Strategies in Your Student-Centered Science Classroom. Mississippi Science Teacher Association, Biloxi, MS. Further, two ACRE 2.0 teachers spoke to EDE 8733: Elementary/Middle Science Methods in July. They spoke about activities/labs they do in their classes and brought in information from ACRE 2.0 content. The ACRE 2.0 grant was featured on the MSU website (https://www.msstate.edu/newsroom/article/2023/09/msu-grant-project-brings-agricultural-literacy-mississippi-classrooms) and on WXXV News (https://www.wxxv25.com/msu-grant-project-brings-agricultural-literacy-to-mississippi-classrooms/_) What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next reporting period, 2/1/24 through 1/31/25, the activities and content of the upcoming professional development days will address all ACRE 2.0 program objectives. During this next reporting period, the ACRE 2.0 Cohort 1 spring follow-up day March 1,2024, will be held on the MSU campus where delayed post-survey data will be collected. Remaining teacher-created lesson plans will be collected and shared. For the spring 2024 follow up, teachers will experience a session in systems thinking and mapping and will learn more about food science. After the spring 2024 follow up session, final delayed interviews will occur via WebEx. Recruitment and planning for the 2024 summer learning experience will continue. A summer institute will be held as well as a fall 2024 follow-up day for the second teacher cohort of ACRE 2.0. Program assessment data are collected to measure the efficacy of the objectives. Those measures include pre-post surveys, reflections, and pre-post interviews. These data-gathering tools and the data gathered were reviewed by the ACRE leadership team prior to the June 2023 start of ACRE 2.0.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Throughout this first year, the ACRE 2.0 Project has provided in-service teachers with opportunities to increase their food science and poultry science knowledge and understanding and the tools to incorporate agricultural science literacy into their classrooms. Data from surveys and interviews were collected and analyzed to demonstrate these accomplishments. Objective 1: ACRE 2.0 teachers will improve their knowledge of food science and poultry science. Teachers will make connections to the appropriate grade-level curriculum implementing inquiry experiences to support student-centered food science and poultry science explorations in K-12 classrooms. Teachers experienced authentic explorations in the field during the ACRE 2.0 program to the MSU Leveck Animal Research Center [South Farm] Poultry Research Unit and the Meat and Muscle Biology Lab. Hands-on learning is a large part of the ACRE 2.0 program. In addition to the field experiences, replicable classroom activities included sensory evaluation activities, food sensory perception lessons, added sugar in beverages lesson, USDA taste testing activities, ice cream in a bag, oxidation of fruit, and dressing up a mixture activities, fermentation in a bag, bread in a jar, and glogerm activities. Teachers received lesson plans for all of the food science activities and received glogerm in their teacher kit to use with their students. Data from the post-institute interviews demonstrate that ACRE 2.0 teachers have improved their knowledge of food and poultry science. A typical teacher response: "... I learned a lot of the processes that go into as far as how you process the meat and what it goes through, and how their quality controls inspect ...." (316) Data from the post-institute interviews demonstrate that ACRE 2.0 teachers plan to implement food and poultry science explorations. "... getting them that experience with going to the farm and how the process of how does this chicken get on your plate? Like learning the process. And how does this milk get in your glass?" (311) "[ACRE 2.0] opened my eyes to all of the jobs out there that kids could do in the agricultural industry and just introducing that in 5th grade like things they can do and they can go ahead and prepare for." (323) "I know I'm going to use more of the USDA healthy meals things and then I'm going to do the Hatch out program so that they can get more hands-on and just bring in more of the experts to give them more hands-on..." (314) Pre-post data from the institute surveys provided additional evidence. On the post-institute survey, when asked, "On an assessment where I had to explain embryo development", 83% of teachers responded they would score at least 80%. (Pre-survey demonstrated 84% would score below 80%.) "On an assessment where I had to explain the difference between poultry products labeled with the following 'free-range,' 'organic,' 'no antibiotics added', 'natural', 'no hormones', 'pasture raised', 'free range', 'farm raised', and 'cage free birds', 82% of teachers responded they would score at least 80%. (Pre-survey demonstrated 80% would score below 80%.) "On an assessment where I had to explain the difference between food quality and food safety," 86% of teachers responded they would score at least 80%. (Pre-survey demonstrated 71% would score below 80%.) From the survey data collected on September 21, 2023, when asked, "What poultry science and/or food science activities have you implemented from the summer?", ACRE 2.0 teachers provided several responses: "The difference between table eggs and fertilized eggs"; "Making SauerKraut from cabbage"; "I have incorporated reading passages about food comparison in different countries in how it shows history for different cultures"; "Fermentation"; "We did a sort the eggs into order based on the 29 days lifecycle of a egg". Objective 2: ACRE 2.0 teachers will develop lesson plans incorporating appropriate standards and objectives that reflect their knowledge of food science and poultry science concepts and disciplinary literacy. Teachers will identify which socio-emotional learning skills they are teaching on their teacher developed lesson plans. These plans will be evaluated by peer participants with a rubric created by the ACRE 2.0 leadership team. All 28 ACRE 2.0 teachers submitted lesson plans based on the content of the June 2023 institute. All plans reflect ACRE 2.0 content. No lesson plans were submitted based on the fall 2023 follow-up day however teachers are expected to submit one more plan by the end of the school year. At this point in the reporting cycle, the spring 2024 follow-up day has not yet occurred. Teachers will be expected to submit their second lesson plan by the end of April 2024. Objective 3: ACRE 2.0 teachers will serve as teacher leaders in their classrooms and schools by disseminating ACRE 2.0 curriculum and promoting food science and poultry science concepts in their content areas and by promoting socio-emotional learning skills development in their students. Teachers will document their peer and parent outreach through two types of artifacts/evidence by the end of the spring semester. Data from the post-institute interviews demonstrate that ACRE 2.0 teachers planned to promote socio-emotional learning skills development in their students. "One of the books that we read was, how did that get in my lunch box? There are so many students that really don't know about farming and agriculture and how the things get to the table or to their lunch box." (304) One teacher was inspired to learn more about her school community. "I'm now going to do some research about the population in my community for my school." (306). The post-interviews also reveal that teachers planned to share resources in their school communities. "ACRE 2.0 has benefitted me in so many ways. All of the hands-on activities and resources that I can take back to my class.... The resources... have been so valuable to take back and work with not only our classroom... to share with other teachers in our school district and ... outside of our school district..." (322) "I've known somewhat about agriculture, but I didn't really know how to kind of bring it into my classroom and what to do with that. So, [ACRE 2.0] has given me some good information on how to bring that in there and offer it to my students so they have more opportunities." (314) From the survey data collected on September 21, 2023, ACRE 2.0 teachers are implementing various socio-emotional learning skill development activities in their classrooms. These include: "students to research poverty levels targeted areas"; "We have open dialogue about emotions as well as reading passages on how to deal with emotions"; "We discussed and read the book Be Kind. Students were able to relate to the story line about being left out of activities."; "We read the book I am Kind. We have talked about how it feels to be included in activities and how it feels to be left out from activities."; "We cover SEL daily in Family Dynamics by digging deeper to relationship skills, social awareness, self-management, self-awareness, and making responsible decisions. We frequently have class discussions about our everyday lives so that everyone can understand that we all have different backgrounds; and that's okay!!"; "we do the FFA Salute every day." In addition to serving as teacher leaders in their own school communities, two ACRE 2.0 teachers presented a session at the state-wide science teachers conference in Biloxi, Mississippi, on October 22, 2023. Session title: Integrating Agriculture and Active Literacy Strategies in Your Student-Centered Science Classroom.

Publications

• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Lemley, S.M., & Morrison, C.C. (2023). Howd that get into my lunchbox: Taking a bite into ag literacy and socio-emotional learning. Mississippi Early Childhood Association, Meridian, MS.
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Lemley, S.M., Clary, R.M., Marlow, T., Bright, T., Reed, K., & Tucker, D. (2023). Integrating Agriculture and Active Literacy Strategies in Your Student-Centered Science Classroom. Mississippi Science Teacher Association, Biloxi, MS.