In the classroom
Soil: Don’t treat me like dirt workshop
This short workshop is for primary school students who want to learn a bit more about soil – how to identify healthy soils, why healthy soils are important and how we can help soil.. At just over 17 mins long it has a few group and individual pieces of work you can do within.
Top Tip: If you can bring a soil sample to the lesson you can follow the instructions in the video on how to examine healthy soil or even better bring a spade to class or a trowel and check out the soil in the school grounds after the lesson.
Accompanying Worksheet
TAKE ACTION:
Get a knowledgeable parent or local horticulturalist involved in building up a school garden and helping to teach the children to grow on their space
Plant some bulbs or seeds – maybe your teacher could give out mystery seeds or bulbs and you can wait to see what grows
Make a compost heap at home or in school
Start a campaign to get people to stop using pesticides or herbicides in your local community
Collect seaweed for the school garden or grow green manure
Start a wildflower area in your school or encourage your school to take part in the no-mow May project
The Healthy Food Pyramid Leaflet
‘A healthy food pyramid relies on a healthy soil foundation’ is a one page leaflet that may be handy to download, print and hand out to your students and create projects around. This can be downloaded here:
The Healthy Food Pyramid.
You could put this image up on your whiteboard screen and discuss with the class the following points:
- The importance of eating more types of food from the bottom part of the pyramid than the top. Healthier types of food = healthier children.
- That proportions of food should have more from the lower part of pyramid than the upper part of the pyramid. Bigger proportions of the healthier food = healthier children.
- The healthier the soil where this food comes from = healthier children.
- What does healthy soil look like?
- Why is healthy soil good for nature? Healthy soil = more worms, insects, birds etc.
- Why is healthy soil good for the environment? Captures more water = less drought & erosion.
- Why is healthy soil good for the planet? Captures carbon which decreases climate change.
You can download these teachers notes here:
Accompanying Food Pyramid worksheet
If you are interested in learning more, why not start with this resource:
WHAT YOU MIGHT SEE ON A FARM THIS MONTH
More educational and training resources below:
