Key Themes and Concepts: School Garden, Habitat, Soil, Food, Carbon Footprint, Community Garden, Bio-Diversity, Scientific Approach
The purpose of this activity guide is to teach students the ecological functions found in any natural system and model how these functions are performed by a natural area like a garden.
Many elements are interconnected and function together to create the natural and productive living system that is your garden. This series of resources and lesson plans start with a general overview of the interconnected systems within a garden, with supporting video resources and activities. With the support of video resources, lesson plan resource will help students to plan and grow a school garden.
Building on from this introduction, more details and practical lesson plans are provided focusing on key areas of:
Each set of lessons adopts a scientific approach to exploring, engaging and evaluating achievements and learning outcomes.
This resource has been developed by Nature Lab, The Nature Conservancy’s youth curriculum platform. It is shared on the Synapses Teacher Academy Portal with kind permission from Nature Conservancy.
Additional resources are available on how to build a garden and additional lesson plans in this series by following this link:
For additional educational resources from Nature Lab, click the link below:
To find out more about the great work done by Nature Conservancy, follow the links:
This resource has been created by The Nature Conservancy and Nature Lab.
Garden Lesson Plans: Living Systems (PDF):
How to use this Best Practice
This series of resources for teachers focuses around the school garden as a learning environment for students and community. Following an introductory series of classes into the interrelated living systems of a school garden, detailed action-orientated lesson plans with supporting resources guide the teacher and students through an exploration of aspects of the garden; soil, habitat, food and carbon footprint and community. Throughout the themed explorations, emphasis is put on gathering data, analysis, decision making, action taking and evaluation.
Learning Outcomes
Teacher LO A: The resources start with an exploration of the garden systems, building a deeper understanding of the important interrelationships between each system towards a healthy and sustainable environment. The global perspectives and drivers inform the local examination and informed action.
Teacher LO B: Each set of lesson plans are built around clear learning objectives and pedagogic approaches to encourage a curiosity and literacy in scientific and environmental terms. Each set of lesson plan learning objectives are structured under knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation headings for students to achieve.
Teacher LO C: Implementation of these resources would require an interdisciplinary approach and the engagement with local community stakeholders.
Teacher LO D: The resources are a good example of how a school garden can be utilised to support student learning and engagement in SC. There is scope for teacher to reflect on their own practice and context to adapt and implement resources in their own schools.
Teacher LO E: Within each series of lessons plans there is space to evaluate the effectiveness of the school garden under each themed lens. There is also built in self-reflection and self-evaluation for students within lesson plans.