Garden of Eden Urban Farming

First Place Scholars School's Gardening Science Curriculum

First Place Scholars School
K-5 Curriculum with Gardening Enhancement

In this overview, sections in black represent established science curriculum goals, and those in green represent preliminary concepts for classroom and laboratory work.

Science Goals for K-5 Students

Students will know about science themes and connect and integrate them into what they know about themselves and the world around them.

Students will realize that scientific knowledge is public, replicable, and continually undergoing revision and refinement based on new experiments and data.

Students will realize that science includes questioning, forming hypotheses, collecting and analyzing data, reaching conclusions, evaluating results, and communicating procedures and findings to others,

Students will use science to explain and predict changes that occur around them. Students will use their knowledge of science concepts and processes in making informed choices regarding their lifestyles and the impact they have on their environment, and enhance their natural curiosity about their environment.

GOE will establish a garden within the school. The GOE gardening enhancement will add content to the established science goals by using the garden as a laboratory, wherein students will observe, measure and hypothesize about how to grow and maintain their crops and improve productivity. Where possible, students may test their hypotheses and make recommendations to the gardener about possible improvements in the system.

Kindergarten/First Grade Science

First grade science focuses on investigations involving life, earth, and physical science. Students care for plants to learn how they grow, what they need to grow, and to become aware of the diversity of life in the plant kingdom. Students observe the structures of flowering plants and discover ways to propagate new plants from seeds, bulbs, roots, and stem cuttings. Students will also study the properties of rocks and soil and ways to sort rocks using simple tools. Through systematic explorations, students will explore balanced and unbalanced systems to begin to develop a sense of variables.

GOE Farming Supplements K-1 Science with discussions. Observation questions of the form

  • “are all the plants looking healthy?”
  • if not “what seems to be wrong?”
  • additional questions formulated by teacher
Measurement questions of the form
  • “what new plants have we added this week?” “how many of each type did we plant?”
  • “what plants are ready for harvest?” “how many did we harvest?”
  • additional questions formulated by teacher

Second Grade

Second grade science is based on investigations involving life, earth, and physical science. Students observe and compare the structures and behaviors of a variety of insects in different stages of the life cycle, discussing and recording findings, and posing questions to be resolved.

GOE Farming Supplements Grade 2 Science with discussions and actual measurements recorded on paper forms, including comments. Each student keeps a personal record of his/her work.

Observation questions of the form
  • “are all the plants looking healthy?”
  • if not “what seems to be wrong?”
  • additional questions formulated by teacher
Measurement questions of the form
  • “what new plants have we added this week?” “how many did we plant?”
  • “what plants are ready for harvest?” “how many did we harvest?”
  • additional questions formulated by teacher

Third Grade

Third grade science is based on investigations involving life, earth, and physical science as well as scientific reasoning and technology. Students investigate observable characteristics of rocks and minerals-the solid materials together to better understand their properties.

GOE Farming Supplements Grade 3 Science with discussions and actual measurements recorded on paper forms, including comments. Each student keeps a personal record of his/her work.

Observation questions of the form
  • “are all the plants looking healthy?”
  • if not “what seems to be wrong?”
  • additional questions formulated by teacher
Measurement questions of the form
  • “what new plants have we added this week?” “how many did we plant?”
  • “what plants are ready for harvest?” “how many did we harvest?”
  • additional questions formulated by teacher
At this level students do simple computer data entry of their observations and measurements and begin to formulate their own additional questions.

Fourth Grade

Fourth grade science focuses on investigations involving life, earth, and physical science as well as scientific reasoning and technology. Students investigate the form and function of the human-body the skeletal, and muscular system. Students also explore the properties of water, changes in water interactions between water and other earth materials. Study of plants-seeds to table.

GOE Farming Supplements Grade 4 Science with discussions and actual measurements recorded on paper forms, including comments. Each student keeps a personal record of his/her work.

Observation questions of the form

  • “are all the plants looking healthy?”
  • if not “what seems to be wrong?”
  • additional questions formulated by teacher
Measurement questions of the form
  • “what new plants have we added this week?” “how many did we plant?”
  • “what plants are ready for harvest?” “how many did we harvest?”
  • additional questions formulated by teacher
Computer data entry becomes standard at this level.

Fifth Grade

Fifth grade science focuses on investigations involving life, earth, and physical science as well as scientific reasoning and technology. Students observe and investigate properties of foods and use indicators to test for acid, vitamin C, sugar, and fat to relate the results of their investigations to the amount of chemicals in foods and how food and nutrition affects the body systems. Students will also investigate landforms and be introduced to fundamental concepts in earth science. Study of plant-seeds to table.

GOE Farming Supplements Grade 5 Science with discussions and actual measurements recorded on paper forms, including comments. Each student keeps a personal record of his/her work.

Observation questions of the form
  • “are all the plants looking healthy?”
  • if not “what seems to be wrong?”
Measurement questions of the form
  • “what new plants have we added this week?” “how many did we plant?”
  • “what plants are ready for harvest?” “how many did we harvest?”
  • “what new plants have we added this week?” “how many did we plant?”
  • “what plants are ready for harvest?” “how many did we harvest?”
  • additional questions as formulated by teacher and students.
The questions and procedures above are intended as guides. The real questions and activities will be created, applied and reviewed by the faculty in cooperation with GOE.