Hudsonville Christian School Garden
                                                                        By:  Kevin Sills

Project at a Glance :

This project will be used to help  4th grade students generate ideas and come up with a plan for a school garden.  It will involve what plants to put in the garden and how students can bless others with what is grown.
       
Driving Question:

How can we bless others with our veggies?           

Standards:

• Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information.
• Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly
• Science:  3-5-ETS1-1:  Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
• Science: 3-5-ETS1-2: Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
• Measurement and Data 4.MD
• Use the four operations to solve word problems involving distances, intervals of time, liquid volumes, masses of objects, and money, including problems involving simple fractions or decimals, and problems that require expressing measurements given in a larger unit in terms of a smaller unit. Represent measurement quantities using diagrams such as number line diagrams that feature a measurement scale.
• Apply the area and perimeter formulas for rectangles in real world and mathematical problems. For example, find the width of a rectangular room given the area of the flooring and the length, by viewing the area formula as a multiplication equation with an unknown factor.
• Skills4Success Collaboration, Creativity Communication, Problem Solving, & Adaptability 

Team / Culture Building:

• Inner Heroes protocol
• Students will take an inventory of their personality traits and then mix them up so they can have a variation of skills in each group.

​Entry Event:

• Visit a local school or produce stand/farmers market and see what they are selling or things that they have created to sell.​

Stakeholders:

• ​Hudsonville Christian School
• Student
• Parents
• Community
• Recipients of donations

Empathy Building:

• Stakeholder Map​​​

• Create Empathy Maps for each stakeholder.
  
• ​Speedboat Protocol (what is anchoring this project down)​

Inquiry / Need to Knows:

• Need to Know protocol - What do we know, what do we wonder, what did we learn?  What plants will be most valuable to use in our community. What plants will do best in our raised garden beds?  What can students do to help the growing process?  Can we make a product using our produce?  Can we sell any of our produce?  What can we do with money raised from selling our produce?
• Students will write down everything they know about the school garden and gardens in general, then sort all the Need to Knows into categories .
• Interview experts 
• Research on what  has been grown in in the school garden up till this project. What has our school been doing with the produce?  What are other schools doing with their gardens (Ada Christian, Holland Christian)?

Incubation:

• Mind Mapping activity​​

• Idea Quota protocol

• Sticky note sorts
• Think/Pair/Share protocol

Checking in:

• Check in with students after the incubation stage.  Each group will be assigned a meeting time to go over what they have discovered through the protocols that we have done.  The teacher will also drop in as they go through the “checking in” protocols that they will share with the class.
• Push students thinking by using the Yes and ?...protocol to expand on ideas​​
• Anti Problem - what are the worst things to do with our garden?

• Rule of Thirds -  obvious, breakthrough, crazy ideas.

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Solution Building:

•  Take all of the information students have gathered and do the Affinity Mapping to start and see the picture of what students ideas look like.
• $100 Test (to see where students are placing their value)
• Poster Session (to see some various solutions for the driving question.
• Gallery Walk for poster session.

Critique and Revision: 

• Where is the Love - students will share a 'passionate' pitch about why their solution is the best.
• Dot Voting - to determine next steps.​

• I like, I wish, What if… protocol
• Seeking Skeptics
• Invite the authentic audience in to give groups some suggestions and feedback. (administration, garden builders, local experts).

Authentic Audience:

• Staff members involved in the community garden 
• Administration
• Community experts
• Greenhouse owners

Final Presentation:

• Create a pitch and prototype of a product if that is a choice
• Review some of the protocols that would best suit what they have chosen as a solution​

Click here for teacher's full plan.

​Reflection and Feedback:

• ​ The authentic audience would provide feedback through using the NUF test.  
• A rubric that reflects how the students have grown and participate throughout the PBL process.
• Use a PBL journal for students to reflect on the things that they have learned throughout the project.​

• Reflecting together during protocols  surrounding their project, reflect with their audience during a Q and A part of the final presentation, and on their own in their PBL journal.

Click here for teacher's Journey through PBL on Padlet . . .

Meet the Educator:

Kevin Sills is a 4th grade teacher at Hudsonville Christian School.  He loves to take learning outside of the classroom and incorporates his passion for animals into many of his lessons.
 
      "Our school theme is “Challenging Minds and Lives for Christ”.  I believe that PBL does an excellent job at providing students with this.  Generating ideas and going through the PBL process is definitely a challenging process and allows students to dig a little deeper into their understanding of the world around them."