Food from the Farm to Your Table Unit

 

Plant a Garden

MMSD Standards Addressed:
Social Studies
  • Political Science and Citizenship: List ways they can participate responsibly in their community.

NCSS Standards Addressed:
  • Production, Distribution, and Consumption
  • Individual, Groups, and Institutions

Goals of Lesson:
  • Students will learn about what a garden needs to grow.
  • Students will experience planting a garden and later eating foods from the garden, as a part of eating local foods.

Essential Question:
  • What can we do at school to eat local foods?

Materials Needed:
  • handout Easy Steps for Teachers: Creating a Classroom Garden
  • previously prepared garden plot
  • gardening tools- small hand shovels, gloves (as many as possible, ideally enough for the teacher, each student, and helpers)
  • seeds (available at stores) or starts already planted (available from greenhouses and tailgate markets) (amount depends on size of garden plot)
  • water from hose, sprinkler, or watering can
  • students' journals
  • writing utensils

Procedures:
  1. Prior to this lesson, the teacher should read the handout Easy Steps for Teachers: Creating a Classroom Garden and complete steps 1 through 6.
  2. Talk with students about what a garden needs to grow. (sunlight, water, soil, weeding, etc.)
  3. Ask students if planting a garden is a way to eat local foods and what the benefits  are of planting a garden.
  4. Gather the gardening tools and seeds.  Go outside to the prepared garden plot and plant the garden.  Read directions on the back of seed packets to determine how to plant each variety of seeds.  Depending on the number of gardening tools and seeds available, let each student be responsible for one job or plant at least one seed.
  5. Water the garden right away with a hose, sprinkler, or watering can.
  6. Tell students that when the seeds are fully grown we will be able to enjoy the fresh foods in the classroom.  If there is enough food produced, students and their families can take food home as well.
  7. Go back into the classroom and have students write in their journals about the experience of planting a garden.  They could write about what they did, what a garden needs to grow, what they are excited to eat from the garden, etc.  Collect students' journals when they are finished.  As the garden is maintained throughout the rest of the year, students can continue writing in their journals about the garden experience.

Assessment:
  • I will informally assess that students learn about what a garden needs to grow by observing the classroom discussion.  
  • I will formally assess students experience planting a garden by reading their journals.