Source: Tokay High School submitted to NRP
SCIENCE THRU GRAPES - USING PRODUCTION AGRICULTURE, WITH THE JIG SAW CLASSROOM TECHNIQUE TO TEACH STATE SCIENCE STANDARDS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
SERD GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
0203365
Grant No.
2005-38414-15659
Cumulative Award Amt.
(N/A)
Proposal No.
2005-02743
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Jul 1, 2005
Project End Date
Dec 31, 2006
Grant Year
2005
Program Code
[OW]- (N/A)
Recipient Organization
Tokay High School
(N/A)
Lodi,CA 95240
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
The Tokay Agriculture Department currently grows over 40 varities of grapes on a state of the art school farm. Students are the managers of the farm and have sole control over the inputs on the farm. The agriculture program has the private sector support to expand the school farm production. As a result of the support through the community, the agriculture program wanted to utlilize the current vineyard and greenhouse facilities to teach production agriculture and marketing. Realizing that if this project was going to bring about broad success and student retention the Tokay Agriculture broughts the business, special eduction and home economics departments into the process. As a result students will see the relevance of cross curricular learning.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
90360993020100%
Knowledge Area
903 - Communication, Education, and Information Delivery;

Subject Of Investigation
6099 - People and communities, general/other;

Field Of Science
3020 - Education;
Goals / Objectives
The project will bring together disciplines (agriculture, business, special education, ROP,home economics) to successfully produce grape juice in a marketable form. Students will be asked to be managers and employees of this venture, end product success will fall into students hands. This project is a collaboration with educators, administrators and private agriculture business and will be successful as a result of these stake holders!
Project Methods
This project will take two years to successfully produce a finished grape juice product. Year one will be meeting with stake holders and planning curriculum. Year one will also have time allotted for the grape production facitlity to be built on site.Year two be the a test run of the facility and of how the different disciplines involved in the project can work together to produce a cohesive production process. Students will be graded on the process, results will be published on the school web site and the end product will be used as a recruitment tool!

Progress 07/01/05 to 12/31/06

Outputs
The USDA grant which I am writing about has fulfilled all of its projected accomplishments and has led the program in additional directions. The grant stated that we were to produce a branded grape juice product on campus. The grant has allowed us not only to produce grape juice it has allowed our students to succeed. We now have 100% participation in the FFA agriscience program. The grant has also empowered students to develop the greenhouse into a producing bareroot vine research facility. We have also been able to not only keep our partnerships with other school departments, but we have expanded our sphere of influence to cover more of the science departments in our end product studies. The future looks extremely bright for the long term growth of this grant, as we enter the 3rd year of the program. PRODUCTS: The products of this project are agriscience reports completed by students, we now have 100% participation by our science students, which is currently at 50 projects completed in 2007. This project also produces a tangible consumer product, produced by individual students! OUTCOMES: The number one outcome this grant has had is on the individual students in the FFA program. This last year we had 100% participation in the FFA agriscience project, which is listed as a requirement for all FFA members who take a agriculture based science class. Before the grant was realized, our agriscience project completion rate was around 10%. DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES: This project has been sent to the San Joaquin County Farm Bureau. As well as local papers, Stockton Record and Lodi News Sentinel. Over 200 faculty and administration know about this project through newsletters throughout the year. As well as 4 middle schools are exposed to this project as a result of a hands-on day that our students provide to expose middle school students to production agriculture and products it produces! FUTURE INITIATIVES: As a result of the success of this grant as it enters its 3rd year the following programs are planned. Expand the marketing research portion of the program to include a larger segments of the school population over 500 students surveyed. We are also planning on using the end product, grape juice as a recruiting tool at the junior high schools in up coming years. One unique aspect of this project is that we have found numerous applications for the school vineyard that have led us in new research directions. We have started a hardwood cuttings program in the greenhouse which we believe will allow us to share the over 50 varieties of grape vines with other schools free of charge.

Impacts
The long-range goal of this project is student retention and student growth in the agriculture program at Tokay High School. With current enrollement at 100 students, we would like this program to bring in 10-20% increased enrollement each year. The program effects over 250 middle-school students each year and over 300 on-campus students as well!

Publications

  • Lodi News Sentinel, 2006
  • Stockton Record. 2005