STEM Outreach and Resources
A message from Valerie Bayes, STEM Education Lead:
As an educator, you’ve taken up the challenge of transferring the knowledge you have to young people with different interests, learning styles and backgrounds. As a technology company, we can’t thank you enough for developing the next generation of scientists, engineers, analysts and robotics gurus who will be asked to come up with solutions for the challenges facing our planet.
Between grading papers, putting together lesson plans, and preparing for standardized tests (piled onto your additional roles as advocate, peacemaker, nurse, custodian, and best friend) who couldn’t use some extra time and resources? Responding to feedback I’ve received at educator workshops and conferences, we created this site as a sort of “one-stop shop” for teacher resources related to science in agriculture.
This site contains everything from podcasts we selected to listen to on your commute to work, research papers for debate preparation and lesson plans for hands-on exploration. Most of the resources are accompanied by video demonstrations or handy animations, and all of them have the goal of lowering the activation energy needed to teach concepts in science and modern agriculture.
No one knows your classroom or your students better than you, and we’re learning new things everyday. If there’s a resource idea you have, or would like to share something cool you’re already doing in class, please send us your feedback here.
To meet the changing needs of the food and agriculture industry, skills in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are essential. Explore the lessons plans below to help your students learn and grow.
Other resources
Activities for K-6 Students
Create a Germination Necklace
In this experiment, we will use the warmth of our bodies to germinate a seed so we can observe the process up close.
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Create Edible Soil
Make a soil profile model and a tasty snack all at the same time!
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Ecosystem in a Bottle
Build a terraqua column which will allow you discover the relationships between living organisms, and their environment.
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Garden in a Glove
This activity gives you and your young scientists the opportunity to learn what seeds need to germinate, grow, and produce fruit or vegetables.
Learn more
Activities for K-6 Students
Create a Germination Necklace
In this experiment, we will use the warmth of our bodies to germinate a seed so we can observe the process up close.
Learn more
Create Edible Soil
Make a soil profile model and a tasty snack all at the same time!
Learn more
Ecosystem in a Bottle
Build a terraqua column which will allow you discover the relationships between living organisms, and their environment.
Learn more
Garden in a Glove
This activity gives you and your young scientists the opportunity to learn what seeds need to germinate, grow, and produce fruit or vegetables.
Learn more
Activities for 5-12 Students
Armadillo Challenge
Not all challenges in agriculture are obvious. Some of them come from below. In this video students will explore a real world challenge engineers are trying to tackle and are encouraged to design their own solutions.
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Brush Bots
Brush Bots is a great way to introduce engineering to kids. This exercise allows them to design, build and improve a robot. Although disguised as a fun toy, this project allows kids to think like an engineer to discover how to build a better robot.
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Strawberry DNA
DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) contains the genetic materials that are the building blocks of living organisms. These building blocks contain the code that determines the shape, size, color, and pretty much everything else about an organism. In this experiment you can extract the DNA from a strawberry using a few common household ingredients.
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Activities for 5-12 Students
Armadillo Challenge
Not all challenges in agriculture are obvious. Some of them come from below. In this video students will explore a real world challenge engineers are trying to tackle and are encouraged to design their own solutions.
Learn More
Brush Bots
Brush Bots is a great way to introduce engineering to kids. This exercise allows them to design, build and improve a robot. Although disguised as a fun toy, this project allows kids to think like an engineer to discover how to build a better robot.
Learn More
Strawberry DNA
DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) contains the genetic materials that are the building blocks of living organisms. These building blocks contain the code that determines the shape, size, color, and pretty much everything else about an organism. In this experiment you can extract the DNA from a strawberry using a few common household ingredients.
Learn More
Activities for 6-College Students
BT Cotton
Distinguished Monsanto Fellow Dr. Fred Perlak explains why farmers use GMOs in cotton.
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Food Solutions Challenge
This lesson is meant to raise awareness and support learners to think more deeply about compelling issues that shape society and agriculture..
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Roundup Ready and Soybean Biotech Kit
The lesson plan consists of five modules ranging from a weed pressure simulation to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.
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Genetically Engineered Crops: From Idea to Product
This article describes the general process by which a genetically engineered crop is developed from an initial concept to a commercialized product.
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For All Ages
The Apple as the Earth
Science helps us understand the earth around us and helps us to find new and creative ways to solve the challenges our world faces. People in the world need food to eat, fiber like cotton to make the clothes we wear, and biofuels to power our cars. All of those things are grown on farms, but farmers face some unique challenges, and one of those challenges is finding the space to grow the things we need.
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Farmer Choices Game
Farming is a rewarding profession, but it also comes with challenges. The Monsanto STEM Education Team wanted to design a game which allows the learner to experience what it’s like to farm in different parts of the world.
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Journal Article Links
- Genetically Engineered Crops: From Idea to Product by Prado et al, 2014. This paper authored by Monsanto employees describes the development and testing needed to bring a GMO to market.
- Development of an agricultural biotechnology crop product: testing from discovery to commercialization by Privalle et al, 2013. This paper authored by employees in the biotech industry describes in a more detailed way the testing that must be performed on biotech products to bring them to market.
- Guideline for the Conduct of Food Safety Assessment of Foods Derived from Recombinant DNA Plants by Codex—This is an international guideline utilized by regulators globally to define the testing needed to assess food & feed safety of GM Crops.
- ILSI-CERA database—lists all of the global approvals obtained for currently commercialized GM Crops. When you click on the global decisions documents for each product grouped by country, many of these documents list the type of data that was reviewed by the regulators to support their decision of safety affirmation.
- University of Nebraska Plant and Soil Science Animation/Videos and Lessons—particularly helpful in that they can explain complex topics like backcrossing and PCR through animations.