Unit 10 — June: Agribusiness, Entrepreneurship, Ecosystems, and Wildlife Identification
Description
The year concludes with units connecting agriculture to business and ecology. Students study personal finances, accounting, economics, and marketing through MyCAERT modules. Working in groups, they develop their own agribusiness ideas: selecting land, calculating acreage and seed/supply needs, hiring employees, and managing operations. Many grow succulents or flowers to sell, learning storage, shipping, packaging, and handling techniques. Students design cost-effective packaging for fruit that protects contents while minimizing expenses. The final unit explores ecosystems through nature walks at school grounds, identifying organisms and determining what ecosystem students occupy. Students study food webs, learning about interdependence of organisms through activities with Sand County Almanac excerpts. Wildlife identification is practiced through scat, bird calls, tracks, and teeth/skull analysis. An Ecologies card game reinforces food chain and energy flow concepts.
Essential Questions
- What knowledge and skills are needed to start and run an agricultural business?
- How are living organisms in an ecosystem interdependent, and how does energy flow through food webs?
- How can we identify and understand wildlife without direct observation?
Learning Objectives
- Apply financial and business concepts to agricultural entrepreneurship.
- Develop a business plan including land, crop, staffing, and budget decisions.
- Design product packaging that balances protection, cost, and appearance.
- Manage a small-scale sales enterprise (plant sale).
- Define ecosystems and identify characteristics of local ecosystems.
- Construct and analyze food webs for specific organisms.
- Identify wildlife using scat, calls, tracks, and skeletal remains.
- Explain energy flow and interdependence in ecosystems.
Supplemental Resources
- Calculators and graph paper for business planning and budget calculations
- Packing materials (cardboard, bubble wrap, tape, packing peanuts) for packaging design activities
- Clipboards and field notebooks for ecosystem and wildlife observations
- Animal skulls and printed scat identification guides for wildlife analysis
Crosscutting Concepts
Disciplinary Core Ideas
Earth and Space Sciences
Engineering, Technology, and Applications of Science
Life Sciences
Science and Engineering Practices
Students read informational texts about agriculture, food systems, natural resources, and animal science, and produce written work including research reports, blog posts, portfolio updates, and writing assignments. Students engage in collaborative discussions, present findings to peers, and cite evidence from multiple sources to support claims across all units.
Students apply mathematical reasoning across units including calculating food costs, feed amounts, percent loss, square footage for coop design, lumber quantities, soil nutrient amounts, population graphs for carrying capacity, and data collection and graphing in macroinvertebrate and plant biodiversity studies.
Students conduct hands-on investigations aligned to life science, earth science, and engineering design standards. Topics include plant cell structure, photosynthesis, cellular respiration, genetics and heredity, animal systems, water chemistry, ecosystems, food webs, population dynamics, natural resource management, DNA extraction, and aquaponics and hydroponics system design.
Students examine the history of agriculture, Native American agricultural practices, the industrial revolution's impact on natural resources, global food production policies, cultural food practices, food insecurity and inequality, and the role of agriculture in economic development across time periods and regions.
Career readiness, financial literacy, and 21st century skills are embedded in every unit. Students explore agricultural careers, practice agribusiness skills including budgeting and record keeping, develop personal and professional skills through FFA activities, and investigate how education and training affect earning potential in agriculture and related fields.
Formative Assessments
- Observations and group discussions during agribusiness planning sessions
- Pair-and-share activities identifying organisms and food web relationships during nature walks
- Journals documenting wildlife observations and identification attempts
- Self-evaluations of plant sale management and business decisions
Summative Assessment
Agribusiness plans and presentations, plant sale projects with packaging design, nature walk reports, food web diagrams, and portfolio and lab updates
Benchmark Assessment
Unit tests on business concepts, ecosystems, and wildlife identification; pre-assessments on entrepreneurship and ecology knowledge
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate understanding of agribusiness planning through a simplified one-page business plan template with visual supports, sentence frames, or bullet-point responses in place of a full written plan. Alternatively, students may present their business idea orally with teacher support, using provided prompts or a graphic organizer to organize land, crop, staffing, and budget decisions. For ecosystem and food web activities, students may use labeled diagrams, matching tasks, or oral explanations of organism relationships in place of written responses.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
For agribusiness planning and ecosystem units, provide graphic organizers that break multi-step tasks—such as budgeting, land selection, and food web construction—into smaller, sequenced components with visual prompts. Allow students to demonstrate understanding of wildlife identification and business concepts through oral explanations, labeled diagrams, or dictated journal entries rather than extended written responses. Pre-teach key vocabulary in both the business and ecology domains, and offer sentence frames to support participation in group planning discussions and pair-and-share activities during nature walks.
Section 504
Ensure students have extended time to complete agribusiness planning documents, packaging design tasks, and food web diagrams, as these require sustained attention and multi-step reasoning. Preferential seating during group discussions and nature walk debriefs can reduce distraction and support focus, and printed copies of directions for both the business planning sequence and ecosystem identification activities should be provided so students can reference steps independently.
ELL / MLL
Support comprehension of agribusiness and ecology vocabulary by pairing key terms—such as acreage, interdependence, food web, and entrepreneur—with visual cues, illustrated word banks, and real objects or photos whenever possible. Provide simplified written directions for business planning tasks and nature walk observations, and allow students to record wildlife journal entries or label food web diagrams using a combination of their home language and English. Group work during the plant sale and ecosystem activities offers natural language practice in a low-stakes, hands-on context.
At Risk (RTI)
Connect agribusiness concepts to students' existing knowledge of buying, selling, and everyday budgeting to provide a familiar entry point before introducing formal accounting or marketing vocabulary. Reduce the complexity of the business plan by allowing students to focus on a single core component—such as crop selection or basic cost calculations—before expanding to the full plan, and pair wildlife identification activities with visual reference guides so students can build confidence through recognition before moving to independent analysis. Frequent check-ins and positive feedback during group planning sessions will help sustain engagement and momentum through the unit.
Gifted & Talented
Encourage students to extend their agribusiness plans by researching real market pricing, regional competition, or sustainable business practices that connect agricultural entrepreneurship to broader economic systems. For the ecosystem portion, students may investigate how a disruption to one trophic level—such as the removal of a predator or keystone species—would ripple through the local food web they constructed, drawing on primary sources or field ecology literature beyond classroom materials. Students might also explore the intersection of both units by proposing how an agribusiness could be designed with ecological sustainability and wildlife habitat preservation as core operational values.