Upper Elementary

The Hooker Oak Elementary Open Structured Classroom school garden program has been growing for the last five years, revitalilzing the garden area (with the assistance of community business support), and now students have 2-3 sessions, (sessions lasting 3-4 weeks), in the garden: harvesting, seeding, transplanting as well as tasting and cooking from the school garden harvest.  In addtiion, the garden curriculum has been integrated with both Life Science and Common Core ELA, so students are meeting some of their curriculum standards through their experiences in the school garden.

The Hilltop Garden Explorers program, based at McCarver Elementary School in Tacoma, WA, works to engage youths and families in an active learning environment through hands on gardening and ancillary cooking, community collaboration, leadership training, business experience, classroom training, recycling/composting and garden art.

Good School Food (GSF) is Jones Valley Teaching Farm’s primary program.  GSF is a food education model that connects Pre K-12 students to food through cross-curricular, standards-based content during the school day.  GSF is unique in its approach to food education in public schools in that we provide schools with state-of-the-art teaching farms and full-time staff, known as GSF Instructors, who work with school faculty to develop dynamic programs and curricula. The outcomes of the GSF model are improved student learning and access to healthy food at the school level.  

Our school will have a ground-breaking in May 2012 for our school-wide garden. Our students have assisted in the planning of the garden and are excited to begin growing and learning about plants and the garden system.