Aloe, baby!

Baby aloe plants!

The plant pictured here is quite a prolific little mama! It was repotted a few months ago and has now produced 4 off-shoots. Soon it will be time to divide the babies out. What a great project for an ESL Literacy class.

Activities

1. Discuss the plant using the 5 senses. How does it look? How does it feel? How does it smell?

2. Discuss the medicinal uses of this plant. Is it from the students' countries? Break a piece off and discuss some more

3. Outline step by step the procedure for dividing the plants. Follow the instructions as a class. Take photos along the way. Print the photos and have the students tell you what happened at each step. Read. Copy. Cut and sequence the sentences. Match the sentences to the photos. Create a cloze exercise in which students can listen and write from memory or by copying from a word bank.

4. Students take turns presenting a narrative on what they did in this activity.

5. Track the growth of the new plants in class. Create a chart to write the date and measurement weekly or monthly.

Poe-Tree!

My Garden
This is my garden, I'll plant it with care,
Here are the seeds I'll plant in there,
The sun will shine,
The rain will fall,
The seeds will sprout and grow up tall.

Poetry and song are great tools for reinforcing vocabulary and the rhythm of the language. Here is a link to some garden poems (like the one above): http://www.readinglady.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=38

How do your gardens grow?

What a great time of year to get your hands dirty! In our community there are loads of opportunities for people to join Community Gardens. People can rent a plot for as little as $10 a year. Or people can volunteer to tend to the local Victory Gardens that grow food for local soup kitchens and food banks. Whatever you choose, there is certainly a lot to dig into to gain valuable language skills!

Perhaps you can rent a plot for your own class to collaboratively sew the seeds of learning. Perhaps you could go on a field trip to observe and describe what is growing in your own community.

Possible language activities are as follows:
1. Go through a simplified seed catalogue that has the picture of the vegetable or herb. Decide as a class what seed you'd like to grow.
2. After choosing the seeds, you could calculate the sum of all the seed packs you'd need and role-play purchasing the seeds from a cashier. Count out the change.
3. Create an LEA (Language Experience Approach) story about how to plant seeds.
4. Measure the growth of the seeds weekly and create a chart. Learners could draw pictures of the growth each week.
5. Get out your culinary hats! Use the veggies and herbs to make your own salads or appetizers to share with the class. Take photos during the process and make a picture story.

Outcomes: Express own preferences, complete simple addition and subtraction, describe own experiences, measure using a ruler, draw basic shapes, listen to and follow instructions, sequence photos, begin to write sentences to describe a photo.