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Agricultural Literacy Curriculum Matrix

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Lesson Plans

Grade Level

Early Elementary (Grades K-2)
K
1
2
Upper Elementary (Grades 3-5)
3
4
5
Middle School (Grades 6-8)
6
7
8
High School (Grades 9-12)
9
10
11
12

Content Area

Science

Social Studies - Economics

Social Studies - Geography

Social Studies - History

Health/Nutrition

Career & Technical Education

Agricultural Literacy Outcomes

Agriculture and the Environment

Culture, Society, Economy & Geography

Food, Health, and Lifestyle

Plants and Animals for Food, Fiber & Energy

Science, Technology, Engineering & Math

Companion Resources

Type of Resource

Activity

Book

Booklets & Readers

Kit

Poster, Map, Infographic

Multimedia

Website

Teacher Reference

Search Lesson Plans & Companion Resources

At Home on the Range (Grades 6-8)

Grade Level(s)

6 - 8

Estimated Time

1 hour, plus ongoing observation and discussion

Purpose

Students will learn about rangelands by participating in a hands-on activity to grow their own grass to represent a beef or sheep ranch.

Materials

Activity 1

  • Jiffy 7 peat pellet pots,* 1 per student
  • Plastic cups, 1 per student
  • Permanent markers, 1 per group
  • Grass seed,* 2–3 teaspoons per group
  • Plastic spoons, 1 per group
  • Trail activity sheets (laminate the sheets and provide each group with a transparency marker to save paper), 1 per group
  • Transparency markers (such as Vis-a-Vis), 1 per group
  • Water

*These items can be purchased in the Ranch Starter Kit from agclassroomstore.com.

Activity 2

  • Water
  • Scissors

Activity 3

  • Lasso’n Lingo handout

Concept Elaboration and Evaluation

  • Computer with internet access for each student
  • Ridin' the Range Webquest
  • Ridin' the Range Webquest Answer Key

Essential Files (maps, charts, pictures, or documents)

  • Ridin' the Range Webquest Answer Key
  • Lasso'n Lingo Handout
  • Trail Activity Sheets and Answer Key

Vocabulary

rangelands: open land vegetated mainly by native grasses, forbs, and shrubs used by grazing wildlife and livestock

open range: unfenced areas that can be grazed by livestock

carrying capacity: the maximum number of animals a piece of land can support without degradation

Background Agricultural Connections

What is rangeland? When the term first came into use in the 1800s, it was used to describe the extensive, unforested lands dominating the western half of North America. Today, rangeland refers to a large, mostly unimproved section of land that is used for livestock grazing. Rangelands can be found in a wide variety of ecosystems, including natural grasslands, savannas, shrublands, deserts, tundras, alpine communities, coastal marshes, and wet meadows. Rangelands are usually mountainous, rocky, or dry areas that aren’t suitable for growing the usual farm crops. However, grass and other plants on this rangeland can be used for grazing livestock. People can’t eat grass but cattle and sheep can turn grass into beef and lamb.

As the human population continues to grow, more space is needed for neighborhoods, businesses, and the cultivation of crops. There are 1.8 billion acres in the United States. This is all the land available for homes, schools, airports, roads, farms, ranches, recreational areas, wildlife habitat, and everything else. Rangelands are important because they provide multiple goods and services and support many uses within the same space; they are multiple-use lands. Rangeland ecosystems provide nutritious forage for grazing livestock, which produce food, fiber, leather, and many other useful by-products. These same rangelands provide forage and habitat to wildlife (including many threatened and endangered species), numerous recreational opportunities, and a unique setting for social and cultural activities. We depend on these goods and services and expect them to be sustained for the benefit of future generations.

In order to use rangelands in all of these ways without damaging them, it is important that rangeland health be closely monitored and managed. So, who owns and manages rangelands? Ranchers may use their own private land to graze their animals or pay a fee to the government to lease public rangeland. Permits are issued by both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to allow grazing on public lands. Federal rangeland managers and private livestock owners work cooperatively to ensure that public rangelands are well cared for. Well managed grazing can be both economically and ecologically beneficial. Compared with harvested feeds like corn and wheat, range and pasture provide a relatively inexpensive feed source for livestock. Sales of livestock and other ranching activities contribute to the strength of local economies. Properly managed livestock grazing can also help keep grasslands healthy.

Rangeland management begins with grass. We tend to take grass for granted because there seems to be so much of it. In fact, there is a lot of grass. It is one of our most important and available renewable resources. Grass plays a number of environmentally important roles. Grass covers the soil and holds it in place, slowing runoff of rain, preventing erosion, and reducing the potential for floods. Grass traps and filters sediments and nutrients from runoff, and helps water percolate through the soil and back into streams and ground water.

Cattle and sheep are like rangeland lawn mowers that can help care for grassland ecosystems. Imagine what your lawn would look like if you didn’t mow it! At first glance when we see animals grazing, it seems like the animal wins all. However, there are more winners here than first meets the eye. The moment grass is shorn, it seeks to restore a balance between its roots and leaves. When the tops of the grass leaves are eaten by grazing livestock, the same amount of root is lost. When the roots die, the soil’s population of bacteria, fungi, and earthworms gets to work breaking down the dying roots. This creates fertile organic matter that enriches the soil.

Rich soils in turn support more grass growth. Grasses regrow from the bottom up. Because their growing point is low to the ground, grasses can usually recover well after grazing. However, repeated, heavy grazing can kill grass. When a grass plant is grazed very low to the ground, a large portion of its roots die, and it has little leaf area left to make energy through photosynthesis. Because the plant can’t generate much energy, it takes a long time for the roots to regrow, and the plant is very susceptible to drought. Proper management of grazing involves moving livestock to a new area before grasses are grazed too low and allowing grasses a period of rest to regrow leaves and roots before grazing them again. With proper management, grazing can be a tool for keeping rangelands healthy.

In well-managed grasslands, decaying roots are the biggest source of new organic matter, and grazing animals actually build new soil from the bottom up. In the absence of grazers, the soil-building process would be nowhere near as swift or productive. Grazing cattle aerate the soil with their hooves, scatter seeds, and trim wild grasses. Wildfires have a harder time taking hold on shorter, cropped grass than on longer vegetation. Properly grazed or “mowed” grass can help create healthy green grass!

Utah Rangelands

Rangelands cover about 80 percent of Utah’s land—from desert canyons to rolling hills of sagebrush and juniper to spectacular mountains dotted with lakes and streams. With this kind of land resource, it is important for Utahns to be familiar with rangeland geography, use, health, and management. Because shrub and grasslands cover most of Utah, managed grazing is an important tool for keeping Utah’s lands healthy.

So, who owns and manages Utah’s rangelands?  The pie chart shows land ownership in Utah. Most of Utah’s land is publicly owned, and about one-fifth is privately owned. As in many other western states, ranchers may use their own private land to graze their animals or pay a fee to the government to lease public rangeland. When leasing public land, ranchers work cooperatively with federal rangeland managers to ensure that public rangelands are well cared for.

Interest Approach – Engagement

  1. Show your students the picture located in the Background Agricultural Connections section of the lesson. This picture shows a cow grazing. Ask your students if they see anything in the picture that looks tasty to eat.
  2. Then, ask them if a sheep or cattle could find anything that is both tasty and nutritious to eat. No, humans do not have an adequate digestive system to obtain sufficient nutrients from grasses and other similar plants. However, cattle and sheep thrive grazing rangelands. In this lesson, students will learn how grazing can be managed to be a benefit to ranchers and to improve and maintain the health of the land.

Procedures

Activity 1: Trail Blazing

  1. Review with your students the background information concerning rangelands, grazing, and the nature of grass.
  2. Divide your class into 6 groups. Each group will be taking a different “trail,” and on their way, they will start their own “ranch” with a small planting of grass. Note: Some of the "Trail" activity sheets will be most pertinent to Utah students, but the majority are generic and will be pertinent to students in any state.
  3. Provide each student with a peat pellet and a plastic cup to hold it.
  4. Provide each group with a permanent marker, 2–3 teaspoons of grass seed in a small bowl, a plastic spoon, one of the Trail activity sheets, and a transparency marker.
  5. Ask students to place the peat pellet into the cup. Explain that you will be pouring 1/2 cup of water into each person’s cup while each group reads their Trail activity sheet, completes the activity, and then starts their ranch (plants their grass seed) by following the instructions in the sidebar of the Trail activity sheet.
  6. Instruct the students to begin working on the activity but to also observe their peat pellets. When they finish the activity, the water should be absorbed and the peat pellet completely hydrated. It takes about 15 minutes for the peat pellet to hydrate and expand into a pot in which seeds can be planted.
  7. When each group has completed their activity and all students have planted their grass seed, ask each group to share what they learned on their trail.

Activity 2: Grass and Grazing

  1. Once the seeds germinate, keep the peat pots moist, and allow the grass to grow until it has reached 2–3 inches in height. Students will be applying two different grazing treatments and will leave some of the grass untreated.
  2. When the grass is 2–3 inches tall, ask the students to use scissors to cut half of the grass blades short (1 inch) above the soil to simulate a cow grazing.
  3. They should clip another quarter of the grass down to the crown—where the blades meet the roots; this part of the blade is white in color. To simulate overgrazing, ask students to clip this quarter area to the crown every couple of days.
  4. The last quarter section of the grass should remain unclipped.
  5. Observe the grass for a few weeks, and then make comparisons. What are the results of the overgrazed, grazed, and ungrazed grasses? Ask students how their grazing experiment compares to mowing their grass.

Activity 3: Lasso’n Lingo

  1. Review the concepts discussed in the Trail activity sheets by having students complete the Ridin' the Range Webquest.
  2. In order to complete this activity, students will need a computer with internet access, the link to the webquest, and an email address to send the finished webquest to (provide them your email if you would like to receive their finished work).
  3. Within the webquest, students will be directed to the following websites to find answers to the questions:
    • https://extension.usu.edu/rangelands/pages/intro-rangelands
    • http://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/biome/
    • http://extension.usu.edu/rangeplants/
    • http://slco.org/weeds/faq/
    • http://www.utahweed.org/PDF/FieldGuide_Ed4.pdf
    • http://dwrcdc.nr.utah.gov/ucdc/default.asp 

After conducting these activities, review and summarize the following key concepts:

  • Rangelands can be public or private land. They are located in open spaces where there is grass and other grazing beneficial to livestock.
  • Rangelands are generally not ideal for crop farming due to a variety of factors which can include rugged topography, limited water resources, etc. 
  • Rangelands are defined in part by their physical geography. Physical geography affects what plants and animals live in an area as well as what kinds of activities humans undertake in an area.
  • Grazing rangelands can be beneficial to the environment if it is managed properly.

Important
We welcome your feedback! Please take a minute to tell us how to make this lesson better or to give us a few gold stars!

 

Enriching Activities

  • Look up how many acres of rangeland your state has available. Is there a correlation between available rangelands and the quantity of livestock produced in your state? Use the Interactive Map Project website to identify the number of beef cows and sheep produced in your state. Beef cattle and sheep are the livestock species that are most commonly grazed on rangelands.

Suggested Companion Resources

  • Tootsie Roll Conversation About Conservation Terms (Activity)
  • Little Joe (Book)
  • Google Earth on the Range Repeat Photographs (Kit)
  • Ranch Starter Kit (Kit)
  • Chew It Twice Poster (Poster, Map, Infographic)
  • America's Heartland: A Sea of Grass (Multimedia)
  • America's Heartland: Bachelor Sheep Ranch (Multimedia)
  • America's Heartland: Wild & Wooly Roundup (Multimedia)
  • Beef Cattle PowerPoint (Multimedia)
  • Frontier House (Multimedia)
  • Illustrated Accounts of Moments in Agricultural History (Multimedia)
  • NMSU Field Trip: Beef (Multimedia)
  • Riding the Range on a Utah Cattle Drive (Multimedia)
  • Sheep - Utah's Agricultural Cornerstone (Multimedia)
  • TedTalk- How to Fight Desertification and Reverse Climate Change (Multimedia)
  • Utah Beefscapes (Multimedia)

Sources/Credits

Story-writing activity (Activity 3) contributed by Hooper Elementary (Hooper, UT) teacher Sharlie Wade.

Author(s)

Debra Spielmaker

Organization Affiliation

Utah Agriculture in the Classroom

  • Utah Standards
  • Agricultural Literacy Outcomes
  • Common Core Connections
  • National Standards

State Standards for Utah

Grade 6: SEEd Strand 6.4

  • Grade 6: SEEd Strand 6.4
    Stability and change in ecosystems
  • 6.4.1
    6.4.1
    Analyze data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations in an ecosystem. Ask questions to predict how changes in resource availability affects organisms in those ecosystems. Examples could include water, food, and living space in Utah environments.

Grade 7: Social Studies Standard 4

  • Grade 7: Social Studies Standard 4
    Students will understand the diverse ways people make a living in Utah.
  • Objective 4
    Objective 4
    Investigate the current status of Utah’s economy. Meeting the following indicator: c) Explain the effects of private, state, and federal land ownership on land use; i.e., parks, forests, trust lands, etc.

Grade 7: Social Studies Standard 1

  • Grade 7: Social Studies Standard 1
    Students will understand the interaction between Utah’s geography and its inhabitants.
  • Objective 1
    Objective 1
    Investigate the relationship between physical geography and Utah’s settlement, land use, and economy. Meeting one or more of the following indicators: a) Read and interpret a variety of maps. b) Identify the physical features and regions of Utah. c) Compare and contrast the relationship between physical features and regions to settlement, land use, and the economy.
  • Objective 3
    Objective 3
    Assess how natural resources sustain and enhance people’s lives. Meeting one or more of the following indicators: a) Recognize the impact of water, minerals, wildlife, and forests on people. b) Distinguish between renewable and non-renewable resources. c) Analyze how natural resources improve the quality of life. d) Assess the importance of protecting and preserving natural resources.
  • Objective 4
    Objective 4
    Examine how people affect the geography of Utah. Meeting one or more of the following indicators: a) Identify Utah’s counties and cities. b) Assess how people change the landscape. c) Examine how altered landscapes affect people.

Agricultural Literacy Outcomes

Agriculture and the Environment

  • Describe benefits and challenges of using conservation practices for natural resources (e.g., soil, water, and forests), in agricultural systems which impact water, air, and soil quality (T1.6-8.b)
  • Discuss (from multiple perspectives) land and water use by various groups (i.e., ranchers, farmers, hunters, miners, recreational users, government, etc.), and how each use carries a specific set of benefits and consequences that affect people and the environment (T1.6-8.d)
  • Recognize how climate and natural resources determine the types of crops and livestock that can be grown and raised for consumption (T1.6-8.g)
  • Recognize the factors of an agricultural system which determine its sustainability (T1.6-8.h)

Common Core Connections

Reading: Anchor Standards

  • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1
    CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1
    Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
  • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2
    CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2
    Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
  • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.4
    CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.4
    Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.

Speaking and Listening: Anchor Standards

  • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.1
    CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.1
    Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
  • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.2
    CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.2
    Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

Mathematics: Practice Standards

  • CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP1
    CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP1
    Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. Students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution. They analyze givens, constraints, relationships, and goals. They make conjectures about the form and meaning of the solution and plan a solution pathway rather than simply jumping into a solution attempt. They consider analogous problems, and try special cases and simpler forms of the original problem in order to gain insight into its solution. They monitor and evaluate their progress and change course if necessary. Students check their answers to problems using a different method, and they continually ask themselves, “Does this make sense?” They can understand the approaches of others to solving complex problems and identify correspondences between different approaches.
  • CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP6
    CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP6
    Attend to precision. Students try to communicate precisely to others. They try to use clear definitions in discussion with others and in their own reasoning. They state the meaning of the symbols they choose, including using the equal sign consistently and appropriately. They are careful about specifying units of measure, and labeling axes to clarify the correspondence with quantities in a problem. They calculate accurately and efficiently, express numerical answers with a degree of precision appropriate for the problem context.

National Standards

Within CAREER

Animal Systems Career Pathway

  • AS.01.02
    AS.01.02
    Assess and select animal production methods for use in animal systems based upon their effectiveness and impacts.
  • AS.01.03
    AS.01.03
    Analyze and apply laws and sustainable practices to animal agriculture from a global perspective.
  • AS.08.01
    AS.08.01
    Design and implement methods to reduce the effects of animal production on the environment.

Within SCIENCE

MS-ESS3: Earth and Human Activity

  • MS-ESS3-3
    MS-ESS3-3
    Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.

MS-LS1 From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes

  • MS-LS1-5
    MS-LS1-5
    Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.

MS-LS2 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

  • MS-LS2-2
    MS-LS2-2
    Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.
  • MS-LS2-3
    MS-LS2-3
    Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and non-living parts of an ecosystem.

 

Consider submitting a lesson or companion resource to the National Agricultural Literacy Curriculum Matrix.

National Agricultural Literacy Curriculum Matrix (2013) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons License

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