The Problem
Growing Together - My school is a title 1 school serving ~2300 student each year. Out of those students, 89.1% are "socioeconomically disadvantaged" and qualify for free-reduced lunch. Each year, as I teach Biology to my 9th and 10th grade students, I would be lucky to have a hand full of students who either have access to some kind of garden or have experience in one.
The California state standards does not require public school teachers to teach anything about plants beyond "Plant Cells" and "Photosynthesis", which is only covered in High School.
My "Classroom to Garden" campaign will have students grow (sprout) plants in the classroom and then transplant them into a raised bed (4' tall, 4' wide, 8' long) that I have built in the garden area. Since I am the Garden Club co-adviser, I have access to the gated garden area on campus. After my students transplant their plants, the Garden Club officers & members will take care of daily watering. I will be taking my students weekly to check up on their plants, keep weekly logs, take measurements, graph their growth, keep track of weather, and host outdoor plant lecture in the garden area.
Our Plan
The success of the campaign comes from the student's enthusiasm when they can see their plants growing regularly. For most kids, this will be their first plant they have ever grown.
After their plants have matured outside, they will then have the option of taking the plant home to share with the family and to plant it at their home. This will then make room in the raised bed for another round of planting.
Students will collect the following data on a weekly basis: plant height, plant width, amount of leaf, temperature outdoor, amount of days. They will also be graphing out their data.
Students will be planting twice per season (8 times in a school year) so that they can see the effect of season change on a plant.
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Since I am the co-adviser of the Garden Club (GoGreen) at my school, I have access to the garden area. As I teach Biology to my students, we will regularly plant different kinds of plants and have my class take them to the garden area for planting. Since I have built the initial raised bed (4 feet tall, 8 feet long, and 4 feet wide), we can use that to have my class plant their plants. The Garden Club members and officers comes by in the afternoon to water all plants so that they are taken care of. Afterwards, I will bring my class back to the garden area regularly to check up on the plants and give outdoor lecture around their plants.
