Discovering Science on the Farm

We are offering a limited number of schools (Hull, East or North Yorkshire area) a chance to take part in the pilot of an exciting, science curriculum linked Discovering Science on the Farm Project “Food production in a changing climate” , involving farm visits, growing in school, lesson plans, video blog, Twitter and Facebook updates.

Pupils will follow the story of one of the farm’s food products, investigating the science farmer’s use in its production, and then produce their own “Discovering Science on the Farm Story” of this product using photos taken on their visit, images provided by the farmer and research from other websites and reading.

The “Discovering Science on the Farm Project” will form a theme of curriculum related lessons based around “Food production in a changing climate” for pupils which will involve:

The Programme

An exciting farm visit for one of your classes in June.

• Up close and personal experience with some of our chickens which we have in our farmyard run.
• See, hear, feel the various stages of our crops we grow – plants through to finished product!
• A chance to see some of our beef cattle (time of year dependant)
• Investigate and learn from our conservation areas of the farm….how many bugs can we find?
  • Why are they important to our farm?
• Tractor and trailer ride for the whole class – take in the view over the Vale of York
  • How many wind turbines and power stations can the children see?
• A chance to visit up close our 50KW wind turbine producing all the electricity for the Free-Range chicken sheds.
• See how our Free-Range chickens live
  • • (Time of day depending) See how we collect and pack 24000 eggs every day in our packing shed.
• See and investigate some of the big machines that we use to cultivate and harvest our crops.

Mr Rook will host other classes by arrangement outside the curriculum lesson programme and we will put you in direct contact for these visits.

Autumn 2013

Starting in September 2013 and based on the proposed new Science Curriculum document a programme of farm visits directly linked to the learning outcomes detailed in the programme of study. We will work closely with each pilot school to produce these themes; with us doing most of the work and the pilot schools teacher making suggestions and giving feedback.

• A farm visit in October highlighting plantings of new crops and livestock winter preparations.
• A second farm visit in June 2014 to follow the crops and livestock as the annual  seasons progress.

We aim to produce six lessons plans, specifically using the farms as the practical example, to develop the Science curriculum concepts and learning outcomes.  An example for upper Key Stage 2/Lower Key Stage 3 is available to download below and the associated video can be seen in the video player above.

It is by no means a final document and this is the area we would really appreciate your help and ideas so that we provide you with something useful that you can use to support your teaching.

These lesson plans and farm visits will be supported by 10/12 minute videos as well as our regular fortnightly programs which follow the crops and livestock through the seasons and the food production annual cycle.  We believe this will bring an understanding to the children of weather and other factors which affect food security for their future.

We will run a competition for your school class where they choose a food and follow it from field to their own plates.   We will help them research and provide background information for them to build their project, including cameras for use on their farm visits.

‘Where food comes from’, ‘How it is produced’ and ‘Will farming will be able to feed the growing population without further damaging the planets resources’, are all topics which cannot be discussed without farm visits. Rural East Yorkshire offers a unique opportunity to teach these issues in familiar and accessible surroundings.

Download Farm info 

Contact me now to join or discuss further