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Soil Your Undies for Healthy Soil

In this middle school task, students explore how soil health is maintained by understanding the complex interactions between living and nonliving factors in a soil ecosystem.

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Cattle Grazing Systems

Students obtain information from various media sources to explain how the rotational grazing of cattle, an agricultural management practice, can improve a pasture ecosystem. Students explore the components of the rotational grazing system and how it improves vegetative cover, grass growth, root development, dry matter production, soil erosion, and stream health. This is an updated version of the Grazing Task.  

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Keeping Lakes Open

Students analyze data to determine how harmful algal blooms in New York waterways can affect biodiversity and human access to recreational waterways. Students consider changes in the ecosystem that contribute to harmful algal blooms along with four existing beef cattle production/industry practices for conservation management. Students select a combination of two practices and use empirical evidence and scientific reasoning to support or refute an argument about how combining conservation practices could contribute to protecting water quality and biodiversity in water ecosystems. This is an updated version of the Water Stewardship Task.

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Increasing Sustainably of Beef with Genetics

In this updated middle school task, students use a model to predict the effects of selecting a bull to be mated with a group of cattle, with the goal of decreasing cattle carbon emissions through genetic selection. This is an updated version of the Genetics Task.

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More Cheese, Please – Middle School

In this middle school task, students use models and data to explain why lactose intolerant people experience lots of gas, bloating and diarrhea when they eat certain dairy products. 

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More Cheese, Please – High School

In this high school task, students use models and data to explain why lactose intolerant people experience lots of gas, bloating and diarrhea when they eat certain dairy products. 

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Food Fermentation

In this task, students will develop an explanation for how one organism’s population growth in an ecosystem may cause the population growth of other organisms in the same ecosystem to decrease.

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Monday, Tuesday, Happy Graze

This high school task focuses on human impacts on earth systems. Throughout the task, students evaluate two different grazing techniques as possible strategies to manage natural resources.

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Frog Fungus

In this high school task, students evaluate a series of mathematical models to determine how a mysterious fungus impacts various populations in a pond ecosystem. 

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Better Bioreactors

In this high school task, students are introduced to bioreactors, a new technology that helps farmers reduce nitrates in their agricultural drainage water. 

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Are All Bacteria Harmful?

In this high school task, students explore the food ecosystems of two samples of yogurt with different bacteria to figure out which types are harmful and then explore the environmental conditions that allow harmful and less harmful bacteria to thrive. 

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California Wildfires Task

In this high school task, students evaluate and compare sources of information presented in different formats to explore what is causing wildfires, the negative impacts of wildfires on biodiversity and human communities, and several potential forest management strategies to mitigate these impacts in two different areas of California. 

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Water Stewardship

In this middle school life sciences task, students will evaluate existing beef cattle production/industry practices and determine their impact on water quality and biodiversity. Using scientific evidence for support, students will identify potential solutions that could improve key biodiversity variables among water ecosystems.

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Genetics Task

This task is intended to be used as a formative assessment to identify student strengths and weaknesses with the ideas of genetics and heredity and evaluation of possible solutions considering sustainable practices. The use of this task will help to identify students’ strengths and needs to provide feedback to students. This will support shifts in instructional practice during a mid-unit assessment. 

In this middle school task, students will write an argument that justifies the selection of a particular bull to be mated with a group of cattle to meet the criteria set forth by the producer. 

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Soil Task

Students use their knowledge of soil, soil weathering, soil properties, grassland ecosystems, cattle grazing, and the relationship between the soil and other moving parts of grassland ecosystems to make predictions about the impacts of rainfall to the ecosystems as well as the resources available to humans. As students make sense of the impacts grazing has on soil ecosystems, they must use and analyze data to construct a model to explain these cause-and-effect patterns.

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Grazing Task

Based on the concept of rotational grazing, this elementary task takes students on a journey to learn about the deep interconnection between cattle and the ecosystem. Matter cycles, food webs, and interdependent relationships all come into play as students explore how various agricultural practices can impact an ecosystem's health.