Iowa Agriculture Literacy Foundation

Programs: Agriculture in the classroom - conducted educational programs including teacher professional development, classroom presentations, community outreach events, volunteer training, curricula development for teachers and student publication development. Teacher professional development workshops give teachers the skills, tools, and background to be able to teach agriculture in the classroom. Ialf offers online graduate level courses and presentations at teacher conferences like the social studies conference, science conference, talented and gifted conference, and reading conference. Stem festivals held across the state connect with students to do hands on programming in agriculture. Ialf has a presence at the iowa state fair and many county fairs. (see schedule o). Ialf does classroom programs and presentations on demand like the journey 2050 program that teaches sustainable agriculture in a fun online gaming platform. Agriculture in classroom programs have impacted more than 213,000 students across iowa. More than 3,100 teachers have been trained to incorporate agriculture into their classroom curriculum. Nearly 1,100 volunteers have been trained and regularly help conduct agriculture in the classroom programming. There are more than 120 lesson plans for grades k-12 on the ialf website connecting agriculture to a variety of subjects. In addition to lesson and curriculum development, ialf produces a series of student reader magazines. Iowa ag today targets a 4th and 7th grade reading level and is distributed to 1,800 classrooms across iowa (42,000 copies). The my family's farm book series is targeted to a 3rd grade reading level. The book tells the story of modern contemporary farms. One program - farmchat, has engaged 5,465 students in virtual fieldtrips to farms and agribusinesses.