Sustainability and environmental education – How ‘hands on learning’ impacts how students view the world

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Sustainability and environmental education can play a worthwhile part in teaching and learning programmes. The opportunity to provide ‘hands on learning’ has a huge impact on the way our students view their world. This is a project that we have been working on for nearly 3 years now and what we have learnt along the way.

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For this to work long term it needs to fit within the vision and curriculum of your school. Long-term projects need a sizeable investment in both money and time. If your vision supports this type of learning for your children then it will be something that can continually adapt and grow.

It does cost money – not only the initial start up fee, but ongoing maintenance and yearly costs for equipment etc – so make sure you discuss this with whoever holds the budget. We have also applied for grants and entered competitions, some successful, that have allowed the project to be ongoing. Your initial budget will determine how big or small you are going to start. Bearing in mind that this is about sustainability look at

what you already have within your school and community. We were able to source a Bird Avery, windows for our chicken coop, iron for the roof, tyres for the vege garden and seedlings, that cut down immensely on cost and gave a real sense of community value.

We also spoke to local businesses who gave us discounts on paint, building supplies and the worms.

Take time with your planning. It’s easy to be caught up in the excitement of your project, but consideration needs to include water supply, the law mowing man, sun, water drainage and expansion possibilities. For us, the planting of the vege garden was relatively straightforward but the placement of the chicken coop needed a lot more consideration and in fact we had 2 or 3 possible scenarios. The bird aviary has been shifted slightly and we have had to move and replant some of our fruit trees as they were not in an ideal spot and did not allow for growth.

Who is this for? And what do you want to achieve? If there is just one teacher involved what will happen if they leave the school? While the aim is for this to be a child based project they still need adult help. The chicken coop idea was actually part of a boys writing project. They wanted to build something and we wanted them to see how writing was a part of this. They got permission from the board, approached locals to study chicken coop design, wrote articles for the school newsletter, contacted builders and building supply stores. They lived and breathed this project for a term. So look at how this can become a very real part of what children are doing in school and allow them the time to make it a reality. They were the designers, builders and painters – yes they had help but it was their project.

Screen Shot 2015-12-03 at 10.38.10 amOur senior girls developed the ideas for our vege garden. And again this takes time. They spoke to the local plant store and we needed to consider how easy it would be for them to weed etc. Building a garden for child use in this instance is not what you would probably plant at home. But by allowing students the ownership over the design it is something that works for our school and our students.

In designing your gardens again you need to look at the purpose. We have big areas for spinach and silverbeet as this feeds the chickens. What do you want to grow? and what will you do with the produce? We encourage our children to taste and try. We turn our tomatoes into chutney and sauce for use later in the year.

Our fruit trees feed our school children, we use this for morning tea, we bake with it – kids need to see that what grows has a natural use. We encourage them to try new foods and it is amazing what children will eat at school with their friends in comparison to at home.

We plant potatoes. We grow corn, strawberries, herbs, tomatoes… Winter is harder so what will the gardens look like then?

Running gardens takes ongoing effort and time. All of our children are involved in some way. Feeding the birds, looking after the chickens, storing eggs, weeding gardens and watering the gardens – we don’t have an irrigation system but some great kids who turn on and move sprinklers. All of our seniors have jobs so we give them time to do this, we continually talk about frustrations and have developed guidelines. We buddy up students and rotate them so that everyone is valued and learns the same rules. Again this ensures continuity. Weeding, planting etc is done as part of our classroom programme. It is a learning opportunity. It is a time to talk and reflect. If kids are talking about it then their ideas are being used, they make it happen and we find our kids will say – ‘the garden is messy let’s clean it up’.

We have incorporated the ideas around environmental education, sustainability and participation into our big concepts for our year over the last 3 years. In our first year that allowed for designing our gardens. We also looked at our local community and were able to build an inquiry around milk with children making yoghurt, brie, haloumi and mascarpone. This culminated in a market day with eggs, veges and cheeses for sale. As a student run enterprise they learnt a lot about marketing, profit and spending.

From there we have studied sustainability and how to ensure our gardens etc continue. This has allowed us to expand and use our fruit trees better. We know from the kids what our next purchases need to be. This also leads into environmental education around water collection, composting, rubbish etc. Our trash to treasure inquiry saw our old jungle gym become the climbing frame for the tomatoes.

Participation is this year’s overarching theme and so when children are doing jobs, sharing ideas etc they know that they are taking an active part in maintaining our school.

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Wharepapa South School


Wharepapa South School is a small rural school located 35km out of Te Awamutu in dairy country. We are a two teacher school catering for Y0-8 students. We believe in learning that is exciting, challenging and relevant to our students and their learning needs. Our smallness is our success.