By Shelby Shank
Field Editor
Students and teachers explored agriculture through Texas Farm Bureau’s (TFB) Ag Literacy Week, which was held in conjunction with National Ag Week, on March 17-21.
“Ag Literacy Week provides teachers with valuable resources to help grow agricultural literacy among students,” said Jordan Bartels, TFB associate director of Organization Division, Educational Outreach. “By incorporating hands-on activities and engaging lessons, learning about agriculture is both fun and relatable across various grade levels and subject areas.”
About 2,500 public, private and homeschool K-5 teachers signed up to receive a free, accurate ag book to read during the week, as well as an educator’s guide and TEKS-aligned lessons and activities.
The featured book provided by TFB was titled Potatoes for Pirate Pearl. The short book highlights Pirate Pearl and her parrot Petunia as they learn how potatoes are planted, grown and harvested. It also includes accurate educational information about potatoes.
Teachers like Jordan Gates at McGregor Elementary School in McGregor used the free resources to introduce agriculture into the week’s lesson plans.
“With children, it’s very important that they know where their food comes from and also what’s going on around us,” he said. “We live in a rural community, and there’s farming and ranching all around us, but very few of these students are actually farm kids.”
Gates, who teaches second grade, had an exciting week planned for his students.
“We completed a worksheet identifying parts of the potato, and the students drew their own potatoes,” he said. “Then, we went outside to our garden where we planted a couple seed potatoes and hope to watch them grow.”
It’s a learning opportunity for students but also for teachers.
“My students are excited when we come outside to work in the garden or we start talking about anything agriculture-related,” Gates said. “They start asking a lot of questions, and bringing agriculture in the classroom gives them an enriched learning experience that supports what we’re already doing in the classroom.”
The Ag Literacy Week Book Program resources were aligned for for kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms.
TFB’s goal is to expand student knowledge about agriculture and help students grow into more informed consumers, while also providing resources that educators can use.
View the #ReadAgBooksTX2025 on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to see more teachers reading the book.
TFB also works year-round to increase agricultural literacy in Texas classrooms through a variety of in-classroom programs, lessons, resources, grants and teacher professional development. More information on those opportunities and resources is available at texasfarmbureau.org/aitc.
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