A part of the school garden has to be looked after by each class. Write a letter to your friend
about how you felt when your class won the first prize in gardening, under your leadership:
Answers
How garden work is organized will depend on your aims, the school traditions, the age of the children, how many teachers and classes are involved, how much time you can set aside for garden work and your own preferences. Most schools with gardens reckon on each class putting in one to two hours a week, with pupils taking on occasional extra responsibilities for an extra half hour to an hour a week on a voluntary basis or in rotation. Most also organize some special sessions for major works such as ground clearing, when they invite volunteers and helpers from families and the community.
However it is done, make organizing work an opportunity for involving pupils, to develop their sense of responsibility, independence and capacity for collaboration and organization.
Bear in mind that the school’s role is to protect, respect and facilitate children’s right to education. Children are in the garden to learn, not to provide cheap labour, and garden work must be seen as a learning experience. There are many ways of distributing garden work through the school, but they should be evaluated in this light. Here are some possibilities:
1. Everyone in the school cares for the whole garden
Classes rotate through different plots or through different tasks e.g. Class 1 this week looks after the cabbages, or does all the watering). Garden records are kept for the project as a whole, with classes contributing according to their tasks.
This arrangement makes it easy to organize communal tasks (e.g. classes take turns to turn the compost) and means that all classes get experience of all the crops. It works best if there is a strong sense of communal responsibility. The disadvantages are:
there are no personal or small-group responsibilities and therefore less scope for a sense of ownership and personal pride;
there is not much variety of work for each child - and hence less to learn, and less interest;
you can't run competitions between classes, groups or individuals;
it needs whole-school coordination.
2. Each class has its own garden Each class works separately from the others, with some coordination to avoid overlap. The class can be divided into teams or groups which can work on their own beds and also contribute to communal tasks. A garden diary is kept for the whole class.
This arrangement can foster class pride. Separate class gardens means children can have easier or more difficult projects according to age. For example, a junior class can do simple flower pots while a senior class grow, bottle and sell fruit. This makes it possible to develop an increasingly complex garden curriculum through the school grades.
3. Groups/teams have their own plots Small groups of students have their own plots. They choose their own group names (e.g. the Blue Boys, the Green Fingers). A group may grow just one crop (easy to organize) or several different crops (more interesting and educational). Each group keeps its own records - a file, diary, etc. Communal garden tasks are shared between the groups.
This arrangement has many advantages:
It gives a sense of ownership and continuity;
It encourages personal and group responsibility;
It makes it easier to assess work;
It makes control experiments possible;
It is flexible - small groups can have small plots and larger groups can have bigger ones
It encourages emulation - most farmers learn from seeing what their neighbours do!
4. There are some individual plots If space permits, individual pupils or pairs of pupils can experiment with their own crops or methods. This opens up many possibilities. For example, give individual plots as rewards for good gardeners, selected by the teacher or the class. Or set aside a few small plots each year and get students to bid for them with well-developed project proposals.
5. Assign managers and monitors Delegate some garden management to older pupils. A “garden team” of two boys and two girls can help to organize work and supervise activities. This role should be seen as an honour: special badges will help. Each month the team briefs a new team and hands over.
6. Create a School Garden Club Keen students can participate in a garden club, meeting once a week as an extracurricular activity. Parents and volunteers also belong, and can accompany younger children.
Children as young as six or seven can carry out simple tasks such as collecting mulch, carrying weeds to the compost, and watering and washing vegetables. But they should also have their own responsibilities to prepare them for bigger tasks when they are older. Give them small but complete projects - for example, looking after three flowerpots or two fruit bushes, growing a cabbage or six carrots alongside the main crops, picking and serving perfect papaya.