Tuesday 12th April 2016
They say that great minds think alike, but what a coincidence when the school were looking to develop their own garden as a portal for learning, that along came Adnams of Southwold with a proposal!
Developing a garden is a great way to maximise learning in a purposeful context. Adnams added an extra spin to open up yet more doors to learning! Why not develop a garden and use it to start a small business, selling your produce back to Adnams to provide fresh, local food in their outlets? We were all ears as the learning potential began to unfurl before us!
So it began.....
With the help of Siobhan (Adnams representative) and the Year 6 pupils we took a bare patch of land, dug it over and created....
raised beds!
This proved to be a great opportunity to practise measuring skills. We also looked at area and capacity/volume to try and work out how much compost we were going to need! When fixing the beds together, the Year 6 pupils also had to measure their angles to ensure that each of the corners were squared...plus lots of practical opportunities for applying calculations when sorting and organising screws and attachments. We had a limited supply of wood, so there was a wonderful opportunity for mathematical problem solving as we worked out how to maximise the space with the lengths of wood that we had at our disposal.
With our raised beds completed we looked towards stage two of our garden project. On Thursday, Mr Rollings is meeting with representatives from the Wenhaston allotment association in the hope of securing us a small plot on which to grow some of our bigger crops. Watch this space for more details!!
Wednesday 20th April 2016
With our raised beds completed, so began the process of planting a crop! The science topic for Year 3/4 is plants and growth, so a perfect opportunity to sow our seeds and make the most of a meaningful context for learning!
After a session of reading the seeds pack to work out depths, spacing and (unfortunately!) sell by dates...we were prepared and ready. After considering what would be a profitable crop (a great opportunity to problem solve with money), we settled on beetroot, lettuce, tomatoes, courgettes and spinach.
Now we hope and pray that the snow that is currently falling at the end of April will finally abate and the warmth and sun will appear to will help our seedlings to germinate.
