Hi! I’m Dan from @awesomeenglish101. I am a passionate teacher with a Master’s in Education and nearly two decades of teaching experience. I love teaching Literacy, especially writing! Together with writing, these inquiry-based lessons aim to incorporate a range of different subjects and concepts into a project. Lessons follow the inquiry cycle of investigate, design, create and evaluate.
In this video, I give step-by-step instructions on how to design a community garden. Students are encouraged to write a procedural text or other text types to support their garden park design. Science and mathematics can be integrated into the lesson, students can use measuring skills, area, perimeter and volume to develop their project. They can also explore environmental concepts like sustainability, food miles and fair trade. Students could even build a model of their garden or create a real garden in their community.
This video can be used in class by educators to capture students’ attention and engage them in the writing process and mathematics. It can also be used by students for independent work with opportunities to reflect and review their own writing and ability to work with measurement. These videos offer explicit instruction, delivered in an authentic style that promotes a love of writing and also incorporates mathematics. Have fun and enjoy improving!
[Music] welcome to awesome English I’m Dan this is a lesson from our inquiry Series where writing instruction can be integrated into real world projects lessons follow the design cycle investigate design create and evaluate each section can be paused so you can complete the tasks you can create text types to go these projects like recounts persuasive texts or procedures remember to check out our other videos to help you do that all right let’s get [Music] started okay so today’s lesson is an inquiry project into Community Gardens now Community Gardens are a great way to help the environment they make the distance from farm to table or Farm to Fork much shorter so let’s first start by investigating what do we know or what do we want to know about Community guidance so if you’re in class you can talk to the person next to you if not you can brainstorm yourself all right so now it’s time for the design stage so our design brief or our learning objective for this project is to be able to design a community garden as an extension maybe you could even put your plans into action and create a real Garden within your community so now you can do this project in collaborative groups or you can do it individually all right let’s start the design process all right so for the design stage we can use this success criteria for this awesome Community Garden project so these are the suggested design specifications feel free to add or change any of this criteria let’s check it out so you can first start by doing a think pair share or have a think by yourself what do you think of this criteria what can you add or what can you change so our suggestions are first we can work collaboratively so important to work in a group and work well we can name our garden we can know the size and location of this Garden we can plant a water source water is so important in ensuring your garden succeeds we can decide on the type of garden is it a veggie garden is it a flower garden we can decide on the size type and location of the planter beds so the planter beds are those beds where we put the plants or the vegetables We can brainstorm other features to include things like compost irrigation or even a storage shed so over to you spend a few minutes [Music] brainstorming so as part of the design stage we need to develop our ideas further a b at this point it might be a good idea to conduct a site visit that means walking to where you think your garden might be you can measure out the space make notes sketch something or draw diagrams you can draft an appropriate text type like a procedure on how you’re going to get your design to work and finally get some feedback on your initial ideas all right get started all right so now is time to create a solution for this awesome Community Garden Project develop a list of clear actions some of these actions might be to draft and publish a procedural text for the garden’s construction to draw a scaled drawing or diagram make sure you label it as well to make a list of materials that you’ll need to make your garden happen to create a cost breakdown what will it cost to create this awesome Garden you could also then make a video a model or a Proto type of your garden as well you could even present all right make a list of those actions now our final stage in the design cycle is to evaluate and get feedback so set up a feedback session share your ideas your plans with your peers or your community what worked well what could be improved finally you may even want to present these ideas to your community or peers and to get more feedback okay guys good luck luck and have fun thanks for learning us today at awesome English I’ll see you next time and remember to stay awesome [Music]