I was wondering if anyone had any materials they would like to share when they teach the different breeds and industry's of Beef, Swine, Sheep, Goats, and Dairy to their students. I am looking for more than just ID different breeds. I would like to know what activities you do and what other material you cover in your lessons besides the individual breeds.
Thank you
John
Could you provide more details on how the carousal and debate worked? I will be student teaching in a few weeks and would like to use these activities but am confused on how it works. Thanks!
More stuff from other breeds.
Thanks for posting these great materials!
Jamie,
Thank you very much.
It seems a little juvenile at first, but I've been having students do coloring sheets on the different breeds. I think this works well because then students have to consciously think, "This horse is an appaloosa so I have to color spots on the back." It seems to worked really well so far.
I have had great luck with the debate format! I do swine for the debate as there are two major swine operations in our area in Iowa. I have students/student's parents that work at these operations and often times have a tough time debating the breed these operations raise when other breed characteristics are brought up! Very fun!
I teach middle school and one of the things I do is have the students create a flip chart of certain beef breeds. It is super fast and you can choose what 10-12 breeds you'd prefer to teach on.
For pigs, I have them research a pig breed and then create a model of that breed with water bottles. It takes three days and the kids love it.
I had students do a speed dating activity with sheep breeds I started class with playing the "Farmers Only" commercial and then we took notes on the breeds. To reinforce the characteristics of each breed, I made note cards. Half of them were farmers that needed specific characteristics of a breed of sheep to best fit their production. The other half were sheep that had characteristics specific to their breed. I split the class in two and made them get into circles where they had 3 minutes with each "date". Students had to figure out with "date" was their perfect match
I made breed booklets. So we went through, and they had to color the individual breed and put specific markings on the breeds i.e. Brahman's hump, or Clydesdale's feathering.
I then had different bullet points for their main facts about the breed. At the end, they had a booklet on swine, dairy, beef, and horse breeds.
Here are some beef breed materials. When I did mine this semester, I actually did a beef breed debate. Students had to actually do a formal debate of why their breed was superior to the breed of their opponent's breed. That's a great way to get the students to research with a purpose and get to know the breeds in depth rather than just to scan over them and forget about it all.
Some other activities I've done:
-One material below is a beef breeds carousel activity. You can print them out and laminate them so you can use them year after year. I usually have students split into groups and write one thing on each rotation. Whoever writes down the most right answers gets a prize. There are a lot of modifications and adaptations you can use for this.
-Beef breed jeopardy. Awesome review tool. Attach a couple bonus points to it and the students will jump at the chance to learn everything they can about breeds so they can get that extra bonus point or two.