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Science is a challenging subject to teach at the middle school level. The state of Louisiana requires public school teachers to plan their curriculum around Grade-Level Expectations or state mandated educational benchmarks. A program titled Horticulture in a Can has been designed to teach horticulture lessons to middle school students while targeting the state regulated grade-level expectations. All lessons use a hands-on approach as it has been proven more effective than traditional classroom teaching. Horticulture in a Can was developed by a cooperative effort between the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program and the LSU AgCenter's Department of Horticulture within the Coastal Roots Nursery Program. Eight lesson plans have been created to meet twenty-six Grade-Level Expectations for 463 students in 4 schools. Pre- and PostHorticulture tests were given to each class in addition to pre- and postChildren's Attitude Towards the Environment Scale (CATES). All tests were given to both treatment and control classes within each school. The evaluations tested both short and long-term memory on material contained in the lesson plans. The data was analyzed by school, treatment, sex, and grade-level.
Encouraging students to become better stewards of the environment and to be more educated in science content knowledge is an important goal of today's educational leaders. Eight lessons were created to aid an established stewardship program (Coastal Roots) in introducing hands-on activities to middle school children in southern Louisiana. Students were tested on science content in the lessons using a pre-test, eight multiple choice quizzes (each focusing on a particular lesson), and a post-test. The “children's attitudes toward the environment scale” test was administered to evaluate environmental awareness changes in the treatment and control group students. Students who received the horticulture lessons improved their post-test scores by 11.4 points (P ≤ 0.05) in the first year and 25.07 points (P ≤ 0.0001) in the second year of the study. Significant increases in individual lessons were found both years. In the second year, students who received the lessons were more aware of their role in the environment than those who did not receive the additional lessons (P ≤ 0.01). The addition of horticulture lessons to the middle school curriculum enhanced student knowledge and stewardship of the environment.
Louisiana requires schools to address designated educational standards at specific grade levels. Science is a challenging subject at the middle school level. A hands-on approach has been proven more effective than traditional classroom teaching. A program was developed by a cooperative effort between Louisiana Sea Grant and the LSU AgCenter Dept. of Horticulture within the Coastal Roots Nursery Program. Eight lesson plans were designed to meet 16 standards and 275 students in four schools. Pre- and post-test were given to each grade in addition to the Children's Attitude Toward Environment Scale (CATES). Additional pre- and post-test were given to classes not participating in the program. The evaluations tested both short and long term memory on material contained in the lesson plans. The data was analyzed by school, sex, and grade level.