The coordinator for Wheat Week in Thurston, Lewis and Mason Counties is Elizabeth Church. She can be reached at elizabeth-church@conservewa.net
What is Wheat Week?
Wheat Week is a series of five lessons, delivered over the course of one week, educating students in 4th and 5th grade about water, soil, watersheds, energy, systems, and wheat, and how they impact our lives. Wheat Week is FREE and any school can request Wheat Week. Teachers are asked to plan together so each day 3-4 classrooms can receive the daily one-hour lesson. All Wheat Week lessons are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards and can be easily integrated into lesson plans and curriculum–especially the Ecosystem and Land and Water units. Each lesson takes approximately one hour each day.
Wheat Week Lessons
Day 1:
What is Wheat?
Students explore the wheat plant as a system of parts. Discuss implication of inputs and outputs to the system and how that affects the plant. Learn what makes wheat grow as they create their own wheat terrariums to observe throughout the week.
Day 2:
Water in Our World
Explore the water cycle, including precipitation, evaporation, condensation and collection through classroom participation. Students model the water cycle as they play a game and travel to various locations as a drop of water.
Day 3:
Amazing Soils
Differentiate between the three soil textures (sand, silt and clay) based on particle size and permeability through a hands-on demonstration. Discover how soil is made. Discuss the properties of soil and their importance to farmers and community members.
Day 4:
Watersheds
Discover what a watershed is and how we affect the watersheds we live in. Students create individual paper watershed models and learn about the impacts of land planning, pollutants, and stormwater.
Day 5:
Wheat Energy
Discover the importance of renewable and non-renewable energy. Learn about solar, wind and hydroelectric power. Students thresh a wheat plant to discover its energy source for humans and how it is transferred to us.