Project Plan Notes

Week 1:
Introduce garden concept to students and explain the aims of the project
o Together as a class we will be creating a vegetable garden and along the way exploring how we can
best care for our plants, what sustainable food is and creating and implementing a plan to turn the
garden into a community garden for the primary school to share.
What is sustainable food?
o Students use Ipads to explore sustainable food and come up with a definition. Have time to discuss
and share ideas as a class. After finding out this information ask students how it relates to a
vegetable garden and have them identify the purposes of creating a vegetable garden in the school.
Class Journal
o Introduce class journal concept to students. Explain that it will be used to track our learning
journey, consisting of photos and written contributions.

Week 2:
Recap: What is sustainable food?
Create learning teams
o The garden will be made up of 4 planter boxes. Get students into 4 even teams they can create
their teams. Explain that you will be working together in these teams and have responsibility of a
planter box.
o Ask students about group work expectations and come up with an agreement.
Companion plants
o Today we will be beginning the process of deciding what plants we want to grow and how we are
going to look after them.
o Explain to students they will need to work from the concept of companion plants what do you
think this might mean?
o Companion plants are plants that are going to grow well together for example planting some
vegetable together will mean that they dont grow because they will be competing, whereas others
together help each other grow. Some herbs even help repel certain bugs, etc.
o Your Task: In your teams you will need to decide on a core plant we will be recording choices on the
board so that everyone can see our progress and we can come up with some variation between our
boxes so we have a variety of vegetables and herbs. Show Bunnings list on smart board help
students with decision so they know what is available. You will need to choose 4-5 different types to
begin with and we will make final decisions next week when we have more idea of our budget.
o Once you have your choices begin researching and recording the best way to plant your choices and
how we are going to need to look after them.
Class Journal

Week 3:
Continue with organising and finalising plant choices & care details
Have students go out and measure their planter boxes
Provide students with budget details - $300 punnets are around $5 each? how many punnets can be
allocated to each team? They then need to use this information to inform their final choices of how many
punnets of each choice they would like.
Teams who are finishing this process can move onto designing their planter boxes plans how are you going
to plant the plants?

Week 4: Planting Week!

Students need to ensure that their planter box plans are finished before heading out to the garden.
Have a class discussion about garden behaviour expectations we will be planting our plants so how do we
expect this to happen?
Distribute plants in the garden and allow students to use the process of trial and error and collaboration to
find the best way to plant their plants.
 -Break & Holidays-

Week 5:

Begin community garden task

o Introduce and go through inquiry process template. as a class discuss inquiry process and make
notes to help under each heading.
o Explain that the inquiry template is going to be used for the community garden task (2 parts).
o Watch The power of community gardens video & discuss main points what is a community
garden? Why are they beneficial?
o Go through community garden task:

Community Garden
Your Task: You may choose to work individually, in pairs, or groups no larger than 4 for this task. You will need to use
the inquiry process to present a proposal explaining how and why we should turn the vegetable garden into a
community garden for the whole school to access. You will need to present an inquiry question and follow the steps 1-
4 in your book to support your proposal. Your proposal will need to have the following information:

Summary: State the reasons for writing the proposal and summarise your proposal.
Statement of Need: Explain why the project is important. How will the school benefit? How does it encourage
healthy eating?
Project description: Explain the details of the project and how they would be put in place in the school.
Conclusion: Summarise your proposal.

o Students begin working on community garden task

o Whilst students work take small groups out to garden (mentor teacher to supervise in class), to do
some maintaining.

Week 6:

Continue working on community garden task

Small groups to garden to maintain

Week 7:

Continue working on community garden task

Small groups to garden to maintain

Week 8:

Students to share their community garden proposals with class

Create some sort of voting system with students to decide exactly how we are going to create our community
garden what do we need to do, resources, etc?
Small groups to garden to maintain (with mentor teacher) ensure all students inside for vote

Week 9:

Begin distributing responsibilities for community garden & students to begin working on implementing
strategies
Small groups to garden to maintain

Week 10:

Students to work on community garden implementation finish this week

Small groups to garden to maintain
Introduce students to reflection assessment task this week so they can begin them: (put emphasis on being
critical of their learning) go through expectations and marking criteria. Students will have class time outside
of project time to work on these.

Week 11:
 Students to work on reflection assessment pieces
Small groups to garden to maintain

Week 12:

Students to present their reflection assessment pieces

Week 13:

Using produce from the garden use school kitchen to create a healthy meal as a class to celebrate
concluding the project! (decide before hand recipe & account for any food allergies)