Welcome to the 4-H Pizza Garden: An Agricultural Adventure! You and your students are in for an exciting educational opportunity. This curriculum was designed for educators to teach young people about where their food originates by using something children love to eat...PIZZA! According to a recent Gallup poll, kids between the ages of 3 and 11 prefer pizza to all other foods for lunch and dinner. Americans eat about 100 acres of pizza each day, or 350 slices per second!
It is the hope that after completing the eight lessons in this curriculum, young people will think about all that is involved in bringing their slice of pizza to them.
We hope you enjoy using this curriculum with your students!
To view the full PDF version of 4-H Pizza Garden: An Agricultural Adventure, click here.
Introduction and Project Overview
This 4-H in the Classroom project, originating in Pinellas County, Florida, was designed for grades 3–5, but can be adapted to serve other grade levels. The lessons cover subject areas such as mathematics, social studies, language arts, and science. It has been used in Pinellas County very successfully since 2000 by the 4-H Program in collaboration with their Florida Ag in the Classroom Initiative.
The curriculum includes eight lesson topics that provide a foundation for youth to learn about various agricultural products that are used to produce the pizza they often consume. In addition, lessons on nutrition, consumer decision-making, and related topics are incorporated to support the interdisciplinary subject matters.
Each lesson provides a Background Information section that is pertinent to the lesson topic. While some agricultural data is national in scope, other data is very specific to Florida being a large agriculturally based state. However, if your state is also a major agricultural producer, you may want to investigate more specific data. We have identified the USDA Agricultural Handbook website on the next page as a resource you or your students can use to expand the data provided in these lessons.
Each lesson identifies the specific student goals and objectives for the topic. In Florida, the NEXT GENERATION Sunshine State Standards and the Common Core are the educational standards used for competency assessment in the Florida School System. The coded standards are provided, in complete form, indexed for quick reference and classroom planning in Appendix C. We hope this listing may be helpful to those educators in other states to translate standards against similar assessment standards.
Additionally, each lesson targets a Life skill that 4-H Programs target as a long-term outcome for youth development. The enhancement and focus to this "life skill" is developed through an experiential learning process that 4-H programs incorporate into their curriculum. The learning experience begins by engaging youth in a subject matter activity. However, this engagement is not complete without helping youth reflect and learn from the experience. It is through this process that we strive to help them transfer and apply the knowledge and skills acquired to their life.
The curriculum uses a variety of lesson experiences and activities targeted at various learning styles, classroom environments and resources. Websites are identified and are noted as appropriate within the lesson guides. Many hands-on activities, individual or for group cooperation, are incorporated into the curriculum. One of the culminating highlights of the curriculum has been a Pizza Garden Field Trip! A guide to planning and an outline of what to do follows this introduction. Additional preliminary project activities that have evolved through use by various educators during the development and implementation period are also included for your use.
For More Information
To view the full PDF version of 4-H Pizza Garden: An Agricultural Adventure, click here.