During this week's readings I was thinking about how you could make adjustments in a classroom to better assist students during the different developmental phases. I am a big supporter of allowing students to be active and move around. Sometimes I think about how sedentary we have become now that the world is at our fingertips. I came across the above blog on improving agricultural literacy and thought what an amazing opportunity that would be to allow students the opportunity to move around more while assisting them developmentally, but at the same time being able to address an important topic. In educating middle schoolers about agricultural literacy you could grow a school garden, discuss healthy eating options, learn about the local agricultural and review the importance of buying locally. You could incorporate the community and talk to local farmers to better understand what they do and see some of the challenges and rewards they face. The opportunities are really endless. I think this would be an amazing unit in a middle school especially here in Maine.
Great idea...I'm not sure how many schools do that but I've read of several recently. This has a direct relationship to middle level curriculum because this is a great hands-on, real-world, skills-based approach to curriculum that young adolescents need. NOT an add-on...but something real.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best known middle level schools 30 years ago was Shoreham-Wading River Middle School on the north shore of Long Island (NY) that was a progressive middle school that many of us learned from. One of their exemplary programs was an on-campus farm where kids worked year round and learned year round from the experience.
Thanks for sharing this. Anyone know anything else about this kind of focus in Maine's ml schools?
I took a course last year through the Hancock County Cooperative Extension called "School Gardens 101," as I was advising some students who were considering a school garden. We learned about composting, choosing a location for the garden, getting community and financial support, and getting staff and administrators to buy in to the program. It was an excellent experience, as I was working with the school health coordinator, several kitchen staff, and a couple of science and English teachers. We came up with some lesson plans to integrate the garden into our pre-existing curriculum. There were many teachers there from all over the area, K-12.
ReplyDeleteThe movement seems to have taken off somewhat successfully in this neck of the woods, particularly with younger students. With the high school kids, it has been a little difficult to get a consistent group of kids involved in maintaining it outside of school, but I know that the Life Skills program actually did a great deal of the cultivation of the beds during the summer months (I believed they worked down at the Middle School as well), and it's been a point of great pride for those students.
Katie - that sounds like a wonderful experience!
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