Teacher Experience: “Business of Farming” for 4th-5th Grade Students

A Defined STEM Learning Experience From:
Nancy Nunn
4 th- and 5 th -Grade Reading Enrichment Teacher
Morgan County Elementary (GA)

Performance Task:
Business of Farming

Here’s What We Did:
For this task, students worked in groups to design an advertisement for local farmers, promoting their product and emphasizing the importance of buying locally. On our interactive whiteboard, I showed the class videos and resources provided by Defined STEM to introduce the topic as well as guide students’ research on local farming. Being in a large agricultural community, I was able to relate the task to our local area, which got students more excited about the project. As a class, we learned about all types of farming in our community, including organic versus non-organic and the pros and cons of going along with organic farming. Because students were to create an advertisement, we learned about different advertising strategies used to sell products.

Why Defined STEM Was the Perfect Fit:
Defined STEM opens the door to project-based learning, allowing students to become engaged, fostering creativity, and enriching the entire classroom environment. Students seemed to enjoy the research because we applied it to local farms, which brought relevance to the lesson. I feel that they put great effort into the final product and when presenting to the class they used terms such as “endorsement” and “hype” when describing the advertising strategies they used, applying what they had learned.