Chico Jr. Curricular Connections

For the 2007-2008 school year, Chico Junior set the groundwork for a school garden located on campus between classroom wings. Building curricular connections was an important foundation for future plans.

Hands-on Learning for the Students

Ronnie Cockrell uses the garden to solve real problems.

Irrigation design. Students helped with setting up the irrigation system. They couldn’t just start tapping into the district water system without permissions and understanding of how the system was constructed. So part of the learning process was dealing with both physical and bureaucratic limitations. What the students could do was to scope out the area, figure out where they wanted irrigation lines to lie, measure out lengths, do some gluing and other tasks that weren’t directly involved with constructing the water system itself. 

There’s a main water line for the sprinkler system. We had to find out where the sprinkler is coming in from.  I ran a wire from the main check valve, 100’ of wire, and taped it to the piping and ran it over to the far wall.  We’re going to hook it into an automatic timer from there.  An electrician will come in and actually wire it up, but we prepared it all so all we have to do is plug the two wires in. 

We also needed to prime the pipes. If the pipe is contaminated with dirt or whatever, priming takes all that off. It cleans the surface, like an antiseptic before surgery. Then the glue will adhere extremely well.  You can find the primer and glue (Purple primer, Kristy Hot Glue) as a kit. Some of the kids go shopping with Mr. C, and wonder why they need all this. Life lessons on the ground.  

Designing irrigation draws on math and science skills.  Students had to study schematics, calculate distances and relationships among critical points, figure out the best way to lay out drip lines, and learn to cooperate with each other while they executed these tasks.

Water pressure. They also figured out of how to reduce the water pressure to the gardens, so how to go from a one-inch line to a ¼ inch to a ½ inch to the actual box itself.  It’s a real learning lesson to them when the water comes out with such pressure that it blows the cap right off the line and floods the entire garden!   Nothing better than a hands-on experience to teach them about that.

Trenching.  The 7th and 8th graders helped design the trenching in the Industrial Technology class and designed the irrigation portion of it. 

Maybe it was only a few kids who saw it and worked it out, but it’s worth it because those kids are talking to the other kids, and so everyone learns more by doing it than just teaching it.

So the students really got a hands-on experience, with “How deep should this be, Mr Cockrell?” “You figure that out—how deep do you want it to be?” and so figure it out—12” is standard depth, etc.

This was very big for the kids because once we backfilled the trench, we’ve got four pipes sticking out of the ground, and they’re like, “Oh wow, this looks like what I broke!”  So where is this pipe going?  OK so from here it goes from one inch to here where it’s 3/4ths inch and so forth. And the process of priming and gluing the pipe together was a big lesson for them, because they didn’t know that priming is important—you can’t just glue the pipe together without priming it”

 

Life Skills

Abe Simmons, Garden Coordinator, teaches 7th and 8th grade history, English and Life Skills classes. The Life Skills students are appointed to take care of the garden. Their special role is to keep up the ongoing garden maintenance, making sure the plants are watered, keeping the weeds out, etc.  This helps them take pride in the school and their contribution while teaching them real life skills and responsibilities.

Outdoor Adventure II—Industrial Technology

This class includes industrial technology, mechanical drawing, architectural design, mechanics, plumbing, electricity, etc. For the school garden, students created the cobblestone project—making a 2’ by 2’ cobblestones with a mold to be used as decorative pavers. They mix concrete and pour it into the mold and after it sets, they take it out and rough it up a bit to make it look more natural.  Their plan is to put them around the raised boxes, and then put decomposed granite between the cobblestones. After doing some research, they learned that this is better than sand.

Integrating curriculum and involving students

Mary Anne Pella-Donnelly, Science Teacher

For Ms. Pella-Donnelly, Life Science is always activity oriented.  She reports, “The students don’t understand growing plants at all! One of the first activities I do is sprouting popcorn. Kids are just ASTOUNDED, just astounded. Just that little activity is so stimulating for them.”

Other big units in Life Science are cells, plants and organisms and life cycle.  Having them directly experience these topics for themselves in a garden is a critical part of the learning.  A garden lets them see for themselves the life cycle.

Ms. Pella-Donnelly has had students plant seeds, and when they started, she picked a random bunch & asked them to predict if seed size had any relation to germination. This drew upon the scientific process, eliminating variables, etc. As soon as the seeds started to grow, the students were sucked in. They were just really interested in finding out what happened. It doesn’t take much to take Junior High kids to get excited about something IF they have some ownership.  They have their own little seeds, so they do have some ownership.

Managing Middle students. “A lot of Junior High kids get pretty squirrelly, and I know that when they have a chance to go and work in the garden for a few minutes, they don’t abuse that opportunity.  It does refocus them and allow them to be appropriate again.  It’s a good management tool.  I would probably have half the class (about 15) go at a time. I would have two different activities, both outside. One might be writing or drawing, and after about 20 minutes they would switch roles.

Art in the Garden

Gardens can spark all kinds of artistic endeavors. Chico Jr. has parents and aides who are artists by hobby and who have expressed interest in using their talents for the garden project. The Library Aide is very good with ceramic tiles and murals and wants to incorporate an artistic mural right over the garden.

And in the intervening year this has happened!