Teacher Talk: Kitchen garden approaches in the secondary years
Is your secondary school a new Kitchen Garden Classroom member? Or perhaps you’re an F–12 school curious about how the kitchen garden program running in the primary years could translate to secondary students?
In this edition of Teacher Talk, we explore some approaches for implementing a kitchen garden program in the secondary years.
A kitchen garden program lends itself well to practical, hands-on learning related to real-world concepts. It offers learning pathways for senior students to consider careers in areas such as food and fibre, health, horticulture and the environment, for example.
In the secondary years, consider running a kitchen garden program as a specialist elective targeting a specific year level or student cohort. An elective subject can offer students learning experiences in the garden such as developing and designing productive garden spaces and growing and harvesting food crops.
From this space, learning moves directly to the kitchen where students cook dishes using seasonal produce they have grown, and develop and design recipes – while considering health, wellbeing and nutrition. This approach can enhance current learning in food and health subjects.
A kitchen garden program can also support other areas of interest in the secondary setting. These include:
- wellbeing programs
- cross-age tutoring between students in both primary and F–12 schools
- inquiry learning
- project- or problem-based learning
- interdisciplinary approaches such as STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics).
Interested in curriculum integration – and how a kitchen garden program can strengthen the curriculum you are required to teach in your learning area or subject? Read our Teacher Talk article Curriculum Connections on how to demystify the curriculum in the context of a kitchen garden program. We have also discussed how kitchen and garden learning can be taken into the classroom in articles covering the design and technologies and health and physical education learning areas.
A new resource, Kitchen Garden Education for the Secondary Years: Connecting to the Curriculum (Book 1), offers a range of engaging student learning tasks for Years 7–10 which shows how to link a secondary school’s kitchen garden program and curriculum-integrated classroom learning. The book’s eight chapters, organised according to the main learning areas of the Australian Curriculum, reinforce subject-specific learning with a kitchen or garden theme.
To find out how your secondary school can dig into pleasurable food education head to our Kitchen Garden Classroom membership page.
Any questions? Call our friendly Support Team on 13000 SAKGF (13000 72543).
Happy teaching!
Steph Davies, Education Advisor
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