The Rutgers Cooperative Extension (RCE) Food Waste Team has developed a new climate change and food waste reduction curriculum for fifth grade students called Guardians of the Food Galaxy. This curriculum is available for public use on the Rutgers website. It merges climate change education with food waste reduction and sustainable eating initiatives to encourage students to become protectors of our food systems and our planet. The publication of the curriculum is timely, as New Jersey was the first state to mandate climate change education in 2020.
The Guardians of the Food Galaxy curriculum was established by revising educational materials from two curricula that were previously developed by the RCE Food Waste Team: “New Jersey Leaves No Bite Behind,” a food waste reduction curriculum funded by a 2022 New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection grant, and “People, Plants, and the Planet,” a climate change and plant-based eating curriculum funded by a 2022 USDA-Agriculture and Food Research Initiative grant. Utilizing the feedback received from testing these two curricula in diverse New Jersey schools over the past two years, the Food Waste Team applied their most successful lesson components while also developing new and improved lesson components to create the Guardians of the Food Galaxy curriculum.
Materials for the curriculum include lesson slides, a student workbook, lesson plans, YouTube videos, e-Learning games, card games, a board game, and hands-on activities. All the materials needed to successfully implement the curriculum can be found on the Rutgers website. The curriculum was reviewed by expert educators from Rutgers as well as elementary school educators throughout New Jersey to ensure its classroom adaptability. This curriculum aligns with the New Jersey Student Learning Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards. The lesson alignments to the learning standards are noted on each of the lesson plans to promote easy implementation for educators.
