Farmvention
- NFU Education’s Farmvention (when farming meets invention) is a national STEM competition for primary and lower secondary aged school children (ages 5 – 14).
- The problem-based challenges deliver key content from the national curriculum and are designed to encourage children to think about the day-to-day issues faced by farmers and growers in England and Wales. Each challenge is created in partnership with the Association for Science Education (ASE).
- Through entering the competition, children can win a range of exciting STEM prizes for their schools, a fully funded farm visit for their class and the opportunity to present their ideas as part of our Farmvention winners’ showcase at the House of Commons.
- The brand new challenge ‘Climate Superheroes’ can be found at www.farmvention.com (also available in Welsh language via the website link) – a subject selected in order to combat misinformation amongst children about farming and climate change.
- The competition has received over 2000 entries since its launch in 2018 with over 5000 schoolchildren from England and Wales getting involved.
Farming STEMterprise
- Farming STEMterprise is a range of free, engaging cross-curricular STEM projects for Key Stages 1 & 2 (ages 4-11).
- The projects take children through each stage of setting up a farm shop business: considering seasonality when deciding which crop to grow, growing their own ingredients, considering nutrition when designing their recipes, using market research to test their ideas out with potential consumers, working within a budget when buying additional ingredients, learning knife skills when making their products, calculating expected profit, designing responsible packaging and much more.
- Practical Science and Design & Technology lessons, closely tailored to each year group’s programme of study, are incorporated throughout the projects and opportunities for applying Maths skills to engaging, real life problems are embedded at each stage.
- The projects have been designed to be easy to use and enable you to deliver key content from the national curriculum whilst embedding important messages about financial literacy and food provenance.
- The projects (which include ten lesson plans, ten PowerPoints and all associated resources for each year group) are free to download from the new NFU Education website.
- This resource was shortlisted for the BETT 2020 awards, ERA 2020 Awards and was the winner of the Teach Primary ‘Best STEM resource 2020’
Science Farm
- NFU Science Farm is a series of resources for Key Stage 1 (ages 4-7). Each resource pack contains a lesson plan full of ideas, multiple resources and a short video introducing the topic. The packs are digital and can be downloaded here (also available in Welsh language)
- The content of the resources is linked closely to the programme of study for the English and Welsh national curriculums. The sessions teach content such as life cycles, food chains and habitats and have the added benefit of showing the Science occurring in a setting that is relevant to learners’ day to day life experiences.
Science Farm LIVE!
- During British Science Week 2021 the NFU Education team created a series of live lessons called ‘Science Farm LIVE!’, the aim being to link farming and food provenance to the Science curriculum for primary aged children.
- Each age targeted lesson was around 45 minutes long and was filmed live on location. The lessons covered curriculum content such as life cycles and adaptations, alongside showcasing awe inspiring moments that happen on farms, such as lambs being born and chicks hatching.
- The lessons were exceptionally popular with 223,279 students from 1,524 unique schools taking part.
- NFU Cymru is now looking forward and planning how this can be linked to other significant events such as COP 26 as well as expanding the model to support Secondary Science and Geography.
What action is NFU Cymru taking to correct misinformation about agriculture?
Speakers for Schools
- Speakers for Schools offers schools the opportunity to have an engaging, enthusiastic speaker attend a school to spark discussion and debate as part of an assembly or group presentation.
- Two NFU Cymru trained farmers attend the school and deliver a 45-minute interactive assembly/group discussion with media content, quizzes, farming myth busting and plenty of opportunity for discussion and questions.
- The project works to give secondary school students access to voices from modern farming and challenges misconceptions and preconceptions they may have about agriculture in the UK.
- NFU Cymru worked with former head of Secondary PGCE at Warwick University, Paul Taylor McCartney, to develop a programme that would be engaging throughout as well as a set of ‘speaker standards’ adhered to by the farmers to ensure that the offering to schools is professional.
- The pandemic has paused this project however NFU Education has trained over 100 farmers and received a high level of positive interest from schools to participate as soon as visitors are able to easily return to educational settings.
Working with teachers, publishers and farming members
- NFU Cymru is very conscious of inaccurate or biased resources within schools. We have had success in challenging both schools and educational publishers when instances have been identified– something that is normally highlighted on social media or by our membership.
- NFU Education then get in contact to present the facts and also offer support for future resources or a ‘Speakers for Schools’ for example.
- The NFU Education team provide regular free training to teachers and ran sessions for over 1200 teacher in the 2019/2020 academic year as well as attending multiple teaching conferences and educational events.
- We work closely with educational bodies such as the Association for Science Education to both verify our resources as well as gauge their members’ opinions.
Cows On Tour
- CowsOnTour is an industry initiative in Wales carried out with support and collaboration from NFU Cymru. The initiative, now in its 7th year, empowers farmers and stakeholders to visit schools, shows and other events, to bring the food and farming story to life in a lively and positive manner. Animals, crops, machinery and other technology are all used to visually demonstrate where food and other farm goods such as wool and leather, comes from. There is also a focus on careers, safety in the countryside and cooking.