Windale Community Garden in Oxfordshire
How can creating a garden be used as a focus for community involvement?
Windale Primary School has traditionally struggled to engage their parent community and because of this, the connections formed with parents were small, but very significant. The school looks to build and extend on these links in Year 2 and 3 of the programme.
Aims
Outdoor Learning and engaging parents are a key focus for Windale’s school development plan. The teachers felt it was important for the children to feel safe and secure and to take ownership of a real space that others in the community see every day. They felt a garden would be left behind as a legacy and could potentially contribute to future teaching and learning for the rest of the school. As parental involvement in the school is limited they also hoped that by inviting parents to get involved in the project they would then want to get more involved in the school and with their children’s education.
Process
Working with John Cutts, a landscape gardener, the children spent several sessions planning and making models for the garden. The children made and kept a diary of their tasks and plans. Visits to the Wildlife Trust and the Roof Garden in Reading were also arranged so that children could see different types of plants and wildlife and why certain plants were grown in certain areas. These trips linked very much into the topic the children were studying in Science, on habitats. The children also made a bug hotel which helped them to explore habitats.
To involve parents and members of the community the children made invitations and the school held a ‘Tea on the Green’ party for which the children wrote and performed a song. Questionnaires were distributed to guests asking for their ideas and any help they could offer. The school then set up a database of those who offered help.
Impact
Subsequently, a number of parents and family members came in to help in both classroom and outdoor sessions. While the attendance of the parents was at times patchy (several of the parents are jobseekers and had appointments at the job centre or training courses), those that did come took away just as much learning and confidence building as their children. Some of them are even interested in moving into landscape design and the school is looking at how they can strengthen this link between the children’s learning and adult learning.
Next Steps
At the end of the project the school held another Tea Party to thank everyone who had been involved and to show-off the work so far. It is intended that the garden project will continue through all three years of the project and that it will increase parental involvement throughout.
