KANAWHA, Iowa—Farming is a familiar way of life for children growing up in rural Iowa. But even for a first-grader with roots deep in the Iowa soil, it takes some effort to really understand the science of agriculture and to see how the use of farmland relates to conservation and other matters.

First-graders in Betty Kobes's class at West Hancock Kanawha Elementary spend a whole school year digging into the science of agriculture. They're assisted by community experts, including farmers and scientists, who take them on field trips and come into the classroom for demonstrations and hands-on experiments. Students' learning is also boosted by computer technology, which allows them to expand their search for information on the World Wide Web.

To develop her Agriculture in the Classroom unit, Kobes followed the model of integrated thematic instruction developed by researcher Susan Kovalic. Kobes finds integrated instruction "a successful way to meet the technology, language arts, and science standards and benchmarks selected by our district."

Students in Kanawha, located about 100 miles north of Des Moines, don't have to travel far to find agriculture resources in the real world. The Iowa State University Outdoor Classroom is five blocks from the school, and a private working farm sits adjacent to the school property. "Both farms are active in my curriculum throughout the year," Kobes says.

During the year, students assemble what Kobes calls an "ag table." Basically, it's a large, flat table covered with green paper, then modified by students so that it represents areas of wetlands, farms, fields, and buffer zones.

Various classroom visitors help students understand how to make the ag table more authentic as a model of Iowa agriculture and conservation. For example:

• A local farmer named Donna Johnson visited the class to explain how farming has changed in Iowa. "Our ag table reflects historic Iowa agriculture and family farms," Kobes explains. "New farms are much larger and less diversified."
• Another rural visitor, Gary Steenblock, helped students understand how farmers save their soil from erosion by methods of no-till, grassy waterways, buffer zones, contoured hills, and terraces.
• Students also had a visit from Bruce Voigts, a conservation education naturalist for the local county. Using crushed plastic dinnerware to resemble sand, he helped students fashion a streambed. "Working with the plastic sand is much like working with actual soil," Kobes explains. When students added a stream feature to their ag table, "it was like drawing a picture of the real topography of Iowa farmland."
• Jason Lacore, a county conservation board member, helped students understand the effects of chemicals and environmental pollution.

Each presentation, Kobes says, "builds upon the next for the puzzle to be complete."
Interspersed with the visits from community members and field trips to local farms are learning activities involving classroom computers. Kobes says her school is well equipped to integrate technology into learning. "Technology access is excellent—one computer per child in the class in the computer lab, networked to the server for our district." All students have computer access at home (or, in the case of one child, at a grandparents' home). The community library also provides computer access.

The agriculture project has given first-graders an opportunity to learn specific technology skills, such as how to make graphs. Kobes made sure the computer-generated graphs connect to what students are learning with their own eyes. For instance, the class visited the Iowa State University Research Farm and learned how scientists there measure rain and soil temperatures. The students recorded daily weather on their own classroom calendars. Three cooperative learning groups then graphed the number of days in a month that were sunny, rainy, or snowy. "The pillars of blocks on each graph told each month's story," explains the teacher.

Students later used their understanding of weather patterns to develop posters, illustrating how weather changes the gardens and grain fields at the nearby ISU Research Farm. Students included illustrations of the water cycle, which they'd studied using the Internet. They also wrote about what they'd learned and gave oral presentations about their graphs.

Having the ISU Research Farm close enough to visit frequently has been a bonus in the classroom ag project, Kobes says. The farm's superintendent begins the year by giving students a personal tour of the grounds. He invites them to investigate questions—such as: Do earthworms have eyes?—using the scientific method. And when it's time for harvest, he includes students in hands-on activities. Students pick some crops by hand, then stand back to watch the tractor work the fields. They help grind corn to make into tortillas and mix fresh-harvested tomatoes and onions for salsa.

Kobes's integrated agriculture project has earned a number of state and national awards. She was named the Farm Journal Ag Teacher of the Year for 2001 and the Ag in the Classroom National Teacher of the Year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 2000.