Photo Credit: "Dessertess" by Flickr user: mcbeth
Day Two marked the official start of the Garden Club. We have about eight kids, three boys and five girls. We decided that today's goals would be to a) introduce the concepts of local food and the food system and b) introduce the concept of documentation and journaling. Thus, we choose the 100-Mile Pizza and field journals.
l e s s o n p l a n
Objectives
- Introduce the concept of food as part of culture
- Introduce the concept of local food (within 100 miles)
- Create Field Journals & Introduce the concept of writing, documentation, and observation
Materials
- Pizza Margherita: dough, tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, flour, rolling pin, pizza stone)
- Field Journals: scrap paper, scrap cardboard covers (from cereal boxes), string or pipe cleaners, markers/decorations
- General: kitchen, flipchart paper and markers Preparation Gather ingredients Preheat oven at 2:45 PM Prepare flip-chart
Part One: 100-Mile Pizza
A) Flipchart Chat:
1. What do you think a 100-Mile Pizza is?
2. Why would we make a 100-Mile Pizza?
B) Assemble Pizza!
While making the pizza:
1. Talk about each ingredient and where it comes from…
2. Talk about food and celebrations: What kind of foods do you eat at family celebrations?
Why do you think we celebrate with food?
Part Two: Field Journals
A. Show a sample journal; introduce field journals and the craft project.
B. Ask for responses: Why would we keep field journals?
We keep a field journal so we have a place to record our thoughts and observations. When gardening, there are lots of things to keep track of and to plan. It helps to have a journal on-hand so you know what happens from year to year.
C. Make & decorate journals!
Part Three: Quick Reflection
In your journals: Why did we make a 100-mile pizza today?
Think about for next week:
a. What do we need to pay attention to in order to be a great team?
b. What is a good name for our garden club?
w h a t w e a c t u a l l y d i d
- We switched the activities in order to use more preparation time for the pizza.
- We used our pizza and local ingredients discussion as a transition between the two activities.
- Activity One: Field Journals
- The kids made assembled the journals with the packets we made for them.
- As we made them, we talked about why we used recycled materials and why we would make a field journal. The kids came up with great answers to our question, including:
- to record what we plant
- to record what we harvest
- to make drawings of what is growing
- Activity Two: 100-Mile Pizza
- Originally, we intended that each student would have a task and each would get a chance to talk about food in their families.
- However we switched this up, too - due to the short time (one hour), and how long it was taking to make the journals. Instead, a few kids jumped in to help assemble the pizza and later the other were able to help toss and roll the dough for cheesy-breadsticks and chop mozzerella and sprinkle spices. Everyone got to do something to help make the pizza, and we did have some unstructured chatting while we made it, which helped us bond as a team a bit.
- Everyone got a bite to eat! It was DELICIOUS! All the kids and teachers liked the taste! Yay!
w h a t w e l e a r n e d
- Differing Levels of Autonomy: In attempting to do the field journals exercise, we realized that each student was not equally interested or capable of sitting down to make the field journals. There were many steps and for the guys, especially, this activity did not seem to meet their expectations
- With One Hour Ticking Away... Just get to the fun: From now on, we'll have to orient our activities around actions and make room for some discussion, listening and dialogue as a natural part of each activity. Less sitting, more doing! That is likely the reason these kids joined Garden Club!
- Start with Establishing Norms: This is like, facilitation & teaching 101, but in our haste, we did not follow the rule. Always start with establish norms for discussion. We did this half-way through, but now that it's done, we'll refer to it and clarify it in the future.
- Quick Reflection could become Quick Review...? Maybe as an opener we can try the quick reflection in the beginning, maybe even as a flip-chart chat... to review and catch up for the kids that missed.
Until next time!
peas,
lindsey
