Discover Dairy meets state educational standards and anchors for math, science and reading. Funded by the Dairy Checkoff program, it was produced as a joint initiative of the Pennsylvania Dairy Promotion Program, Center for Dairy Excellence and Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association.

“Introducing these middle school-level lessons is a way to connect students with the dairy farms that produce the milk and dairy foods they eat,” said Jayne Sebright, communications director of the Center for Dairy Excellence. “We ask local dairy farm families to encourage more school districts across the Mid-Atlantic region to offer the lessons.”

The new lessons build on existing Discover Dairy lessons designed for upper elementary level students, launched in 2008. Since then the series has been used in more than 300 Pennsylvania classrooms and more than 15 states. The www.discoverdairy.com website, which also includes interactive games for kids and farm tour resources for farmers, typically draws about 1,000 visitors each month.

“The new middle school lessons take science concepts, like selective breeding and renewable resources, and apply them to real-life situations on the dairy farm,” Sebright said. “The lessons help students, many of whom have never seen a farm, better understand the dairy industry’s key role in feeding the world.”

Developed with input from science teachers, each lesson includes a four-minute video motivator with footage from Pennsylvania dairy farms, a guided reading selection that includes relevant vocabulary and lab-based instruction to provide hands-on exercises related to the lessons.