Agricultural Literacy Week

Agricultural Literacy Week ~ March 20-24, 2023

• How does the Agricultural Literacy Week program work?
• About About Tomatoes for Neela by Padma Lakshmi
• Educator Resources
• Agricultural Literacy Week Archive
• Sponsor a Book for Your Local School

How Does Agricultural Literacy Week (ALW) Work?

In celebration of New York agriculture, volunteers throughout the state will read a book with an agricultural theme to elementary students, with a focus on second grade classrooms. Farmers, FFA and 4-H members, adults engaged in a career in agriculture, and engaged in our food system volunteer to enthusiastically engage your students in a paired hands-on activity related to the book to extend learning. The book will be donated to the school or classroom library with a bookplate recognizing the donor and our celebration of New York Agricultural Literacy Week. 2,300 books were donated last year while 75,000 elementary students participated in an experiential learning activity.

Start to finish the program takes approximately 40 minutes per classroom

1. Agricultural Literacy Week volunteers work with their county's coordinator to set up visits to local schools
2. Volunteers read the selected book aloud to the students.
3. Following the reading, volunteers conduct an activity with students and share their experiences in agriculture.
4. The book is donated to the school or classroom library for students to enjoy and reference throughout the school year.

All activity materials are prepared by NYAITC and schools get to keep a copy of the book for their school or classroom library.

About This Year's Book

Tomatoes for Neela

Neela loves cooking with her amma and writing down the recipes in her notebook. It makes her feel closer to her paati who lives far away in India. On Saturdays, Neela and Amma go to the green market and today they are buying tomatoes to make Paati’s famous sauce. But first, Neela needs to learn about all the different kinds of tomatoes they can pick from. And as Neela and Amma cook together, they find a way for Paati to share in both the love and the flavors of the day.

Author Padma Lakshmi takes young readers on an intergenerational journey full of delicious flavors and fun food facts that celebrates a family’s treasured recipes and illustrator Juana Martinez-Neal brings this circle of women to life with vivid detail and warmth. Tomatoes for Neela lovingly affirms how we can connect to other cultures and build communities through food.

Educator Resource Guide

Agricultural Literacy Week 2023 celebrates the connection of food and culture and how it ties generations together. Utilize the Educator Resource Guide to connect the story, Tomatoes for Neela, with an interactive lesson and additional extension activities and resources.

• Educator Resource Guide

Classroom ALW Videos

Padma Lakshmi reads "Tomatoes for Neela"

Immerse yourself in the story as Author Padma Lakshmi reads aloud from her book, "Tomatoes for Neela".

Companion Lessons and Resources

You can share these additional resources with the classes your volunteers read to so teachers may prepare their students for Agricultural Literacy Week or extend the learning afterwards in their classrooms.

Lessons

Multimedia

Books

×


Lessons
Tomato Trivia
Grades K-2
Purpose
Using tomatoes as a theme, students practice the math and science skills of estimating, measuring, counting, graphing and sequencing.
• View this lesson
The Columbian Exchange of Old and New World Foods
Grades 3-5
Purpose
Students explore New World and Old World food origins to discover how the Columbian Exchange altered people’s lives worldwide.
• View this lesson
Cultures, Food, and Communities Around the World
Grades K-2
Grades 3-5
Purpose
Students explore different cultures around the world and their unique traditions centered around food and its preparations. Students discover how food gets from the farm to the grocery store.
• View this lesson for Grades K-2
• View this lesson for Grades 3-5
Farmers Market Finds
Grades 3-5
Purpose
Students explore the value of farmers markets to local communities and discover the benefits of locally-grown food.
• View this lesson
Pizza Time!
Grades 3-5
Purpose
Students use pizza as a basis for exploring agriculture, geography, and mathematics.
• View this lesson
×


Multimedia
Top 10 Foods That Originally Looked Totally Different
Everyday foods, fruit and veggies used to look totally different before we started cultivating them. But did you know they haven’t always looked like they currently do? Here are 10 fruits and veggies that looked very different before we started cultivating them!
• View this resource
Producepedia
Fruits, vegetables, and nuts are all considered produce. Producepedia is a website devoted to teaching about these important food crops. Find fun facts about various produce, learn about how and where it is grown, when it is in season, and watch videos from top chefs about how to cook and prepare the produce for eating.
• View this resource
Garden Genetics: Teaching With Edible Plants
Tired of teaching genetic concepts with the same old pink petunias and Mendel’s peas? With Garden Genetics, you can present core content in ways that are fun for students and fresh for you. This two-part set—a teacher edition and companion student edition—is adaptable to biology students at all levels, including AP. It uses a series of activities and inquiry-based experiments with familiar foods to teach genetics while helping students make connections to ecology, evolution, and plant biology.
• View this resource
SpaceLite (Plant Light)
This small grow light is easy to set up, use, and store, and it comes in a kit with everything you need to get started: frame, pot, light bulb, light timer, and one packet each of Micro-tina Tomato and Earligreen Pea space seeds. These miniature plants are sure to impress your students and will get flowers and edible fruit—perfect for life cycle studies.
• View this resource
×


Books
A True Book: Tomatoes
From the early cultivation of tomatoes by the Aztecs to the introduction of the tomato to Europe by the Spanish Conquistadors and modern culture today, this book provides an accurate and comprehensive look at tomatoes. The author has even depicted and described backyard, greenhouse, and large-scale tomato production. The story of processing the tomato into a variety of products is enhanced by including the rise of the Campbell Soup Company. The book ends with a useful glossary.
• View this book
Fruit Bowl
All the fruits are in the bowl. There's Apple and Orange. Strawberry and Peach. Plum and Pear. And, of course, Tomato. Now wait just a minute! Tomatoes aren't fruit! Or are they? Using sly science (and some wisdom from a wise old raisin), Tomato proves all the fruit wrong and shows that he belongs in the bowl just as much as the next blueberry! And he's bringing some unexpected friends too!
• View this book
I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato
This story makes a fun hook to engage young students with healthy eating. Lola is a very fussy eater. Carrots are for rabbits and peas are 'too small and too green.' One day, after rattling off her long list of despised foods, she ends with the vehement pronouncement, "And I absolutely will never not ever eat a tomato." Not convinced, Lola's older brother Charlie has an idea. He tells Lola that the orange things on the table are not carrots, but "orange twiglets from Jupiter" and peas are in fact "green drops from Greenland." Mashed potatoes, when pitched as "cloud fluff from the pointiest peak of Mount Fuji" suddenly seem appealing to Lola. And in the end, might she even eat a tomato?
• View this book
The Summer My Father Was Ten
That was the summer the boy lost a baseball under a tomato plant in Mr. Bellavista's garden. And someone tossed a tomato back instead of a baseball. A lively battle took place, which seemes like great fun at the time, but in the end Mr. Bellavista's garden had been destroyed. In a touching story of one boy's efforts to make amends, we see the rebuilding of a garden and the forming of a relationship across generations.
• View this book
Tomatoes, Potatoes, Corn and Beans
This excellent book describes how foods from North and South America changed eating around the world. It focuses on corn, beans, peppers, peanuts, potatoes, tomatoes, and chocolate but also includes other foods that originated in the Americas. Can you imagine Italian food without the tomato? Indian curries without the pepper? German or Irish food without the potato? Corn is now the most widely grown grain in the world. This book details the history of those transitions and is illustrated with historic artwork and modern photos. For anyone wishing to understand the real gold found in America, this book is an essential read.
• View this book

Quizlet

Utilize this resource to explore the vocabulary in this year's book.

• Try quizlet

Agricultural Literacy Week Archive

Now in its 17th Year, Agricultural Literacy Week has helped to bring agriculturally themed books and resources into thousands of classrooms and libraries throughout New York State.

Click book image below to explore past years books and resources.




















Sponsorships & Donations

Would you like to fund the purchase of one or more books?

The books are $12 each and will be donated to the school library after being read.

Contact your county coordinator for more details on where to send your donation. Donors will be recognized on a special bookplate. You may choose to have your donated book sent to a specific school, or to read it yourself to your local school.

For County Coordinators

This area of NYAITC's website is for those who assist with carrying out Agriculture in the Classroom programming. County coordinators should follow the link below to login and access planning documents and information regarding Agricultural Literacy Week.

• Access documents and information regarding ALW