Description
What our Agricultural Revolutions lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Agricultural Revolutions is a high-interest reading comprehension lesson plan. As such, students will practice various close reading and comprehension skills. By the end of the lesson, students will understand the three agricultural revolutions and the historical impact that agriculture has on global society. This lesson is for students in 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the orange box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Teacher Notes
The paragraph on this page gives you a little more information on the lesson overall and describes what you may want to focus your teaching on. It explains that you can teach this lesson in a whole-class setting or as an independent, small-group activity. The blank lines are available for you to write out any thoughts or ideas you have as you prepare.
AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTIONS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
The Agricultural Revolutions lesson plan includes four pages of content. When you think of a revolution, what image do you see? Maybe your first thought is the American Revolution, when America declared its independence from Great Britain and fought in the Revolutionary War. Or, maybe you think of a planet revolving around the sun. Have you thought that a revolution is something very different from these two examples? A revolution is a period of drastic and far-reaching change in scientific understanding, technology, or production methods. For example, some say we are entering an AI (artificial intelligence) revolution.
First Agricultural Revolution
Getting the complete picture of the agricultural revolutions requires that we go back in time—really far back! The First Agricultural Revolution occurred during the Neolithic Age. The prefix neo– means new, and the suffix –lithic came from the Greek word lithos, meaning stone or rock. Paleo is another Greek word that is the opposite of neo. It means old or ancient. The Neolithic Age or New Stone Age began around 10,000 BCE. The Neolithic Age followed the Paleolithic Age. What’s the difference? The Paleolithic Age gradually gave way to the Neolithic Age. Or, in other words, the Old Stone Age gave way to the New Stone Age! Word meaning aside, what was the difference, and what does this have to do with the agricultural revolutions?
During the Paleolithic Age humans began making tools from rocks. The tools were weapons or crude hand tools. Early humans were nomads. They followed food sources and never settled in one place for long. Historians call them hunter-gatherers as well because they were constantly on the move in search of food. Early humans were like grazing animals, never staying in one place for very long because food sources would become scarce over time. As they traveled, they gathered wild plants and berries. If they were lucky, they would find an animal to eat.
Growing Crops
At some point, early humans made a fantastic discovery that forever changed how they interacted with one another and with the environment. We are accustomed to having farms and grocery stores meet our dietary needs. It wasn’t until the Neolithic Age, however, that humans discovered they could grow crops and settle in one place, which ended their need to constantly travel to find food. The shift was literally life-changing! The Neolithic Age ended the nomadic Paleolithic Age.
In the Neolithic Age, humans began to settle into agricultural villages and communities. Their not having to be in perpetual motion to find food led to incredible changes in housing, tools, and society. The First Agricultural Revolution began when humans discovered they could till the soil, plant seeds, and harvest crops. Agriculture is the science or practice of farming, including the cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products.
One way to look at history is through the lenses of innovation, technology, or invention. Learning to cultivate land and domesticate animals meant humans could worry less about where and how to find food. These two innovations had several positive effects on human development. For example, not being nomadic and experiencing less food insecurity enabled humans to focus on building permanent structures, such as homes. Since not everyone in a tribe had to be involved in securing food, humans began specializing in other types of labor, such as construction, toolmaking, governing, and other crafts. As populations grew, so did trade between tribes and villages, and a system of commerce developed. Nearly all of these positive developments grew (no pun intended!) from the First Agricultural Revolution in the Neolithic Age.
Second Agricultural Revolution
Over thousands of years, humans generally became more proficient at food production. New techniques in soil management, irrigation, and a better understanding of the most efficient ways to raise plants and animals continued for several thousand years. The 17th century ushered in a Second Agricultural Revolution. One example of this revolution became known as the four-field system. Farmers understood that to maintain the soil in a field, they needed to rotate or move crops around. This is because planting the same crop in every field would eventually deplete the soil of key nutrients, and crop yields would drop to zero. So they would leave one field unplanted and plant in three others, rotating which field remained empty each year.
Around 1730, British politican Charles Townshend popularized the four-field crop system that he observed from his travels through Belgium. What Townshend did was rotate different crops across the four fields, so that no field was left without a crop. This led to higher crop yields and a surplus. The method became so popular in Britain that Townshend earned the nickname Turnip Townshend. More significantly, it ushered in the Second Agricultural Revolution, which is also known as the British Agricultural Revolution.
Hotbed of Change
Better agricultural practices in the 17th and 18th centuries led to better yields. However, what really kick-started the Second Agricultural Revolution was the improvement of tools and the mechanization of farm equipment. Remember, a revolution is a period of drastic and far-reaching change in scientific understanding, technology, or production methods. The 17th and 18th centuries—and, moving into the 19th—were a hotbed of all three. Simultaneous with the British Agricultural Revolution was another revolution, the British Industrial Revolution. The British Industrial Revolution was a period of significant technological change around 1760, marked by the introduction of steam-powered machinery.
The British Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions were mutually beneficial. Improvements in farming techniques and the mechanization of farm equipment freed up labor for factories. Mechanization increased crop yields, allowing farmers to purchase more, which in turn increased factory demand. As farm yields increased with mechanization, fewer laborers were necessary to manage farms. Many of these laborers flocked to cities to work in the factories that produced the machinery. The growth of factories caused a massive migration from rural areas to towns and cities. Historians estimate that the number of people living in urban areas rose from 20% to 50% by the mid-1800s.
Third Agricultural Revolution
We see how the British Industrial Revolution was fed by the Second Agricultural Revolution, which dramatically remade British society. By the 20th century, global hunger drove the agricultural industry, the government, and non-profits seeking to end world hunger to rethink how food was grown and distributed worldwide. The Third Agricultural Revolution, known as the Green Revolution, was a response to the problem of unequal food distribution and to countries’ desire for self-sufficiency. Many countries were forced to import food to feed their population. These countries wanted to find ways for their local farmers to feed everyone in the country without relying on outsiders.
The term “Green Revolution” refers to a peaceful, technological transformation of agriculture in contrast to the violent Red Revolution of the mid-20th century. William S. Gaud of USAID first used the term in a 1968 speech. The color green symbolizes increased global crop yields driven by scientific and technological advancements, as well as a movement toward self-sufficiency. New farming ideas included improved watering systems, pest control, and high-quality plant food. Scientists also created new crop varieties that produced more food and were more resistant to disease and adverse weather conditions.
Will there be other agricultural revolutions? Absolutely! Agricultural scientists are constantly innovating and searching for better ways to produce more food at a lower cost and with less of an environmental impact. So, the next time you are eating a meal, reflect on the fact that, since the start of the Paleolithic Age (nearly 2.6 million years ago), humankind’s search to feed the world will continue long into the future. And who knows? Maybe you will be a future scientist who starts the next agricultural revolution!
AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTIONS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Taj Mahal lesson plan includes two worksheets: an activity worksheet and a practice worksheet. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
CAUSE AND EFFECT ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For this activity, students will test their knowledge about the three agricultural revolutions. They will complete a table by filling in the missing information in the Cause and Effect columns that match each revolution. There is an answer key for this activity that you can use to compare with students’ responses.
AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTIONS REVIEW PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet lists 10 questions based on the content. These questions all relate to the content pages, so students will need to refer to them often for the answers. In addition, each question provides which reading tool the question corresponds to, such as text feature, vocabulary, or comprehension.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes an answer key for the practice worksheet. Correct responses are in red to make it easier to compare with students’ answers. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
