"Eat your Weedies!"

Edible weeds in your neighbourhood? Why not learn about them!

With a teacher experienced in identifying edible weeds, several activities are possible across the levels.

A good resource book like this one can be helpful.  You could use it for your own information or adapt it for higher level learners.

You could
1. Talk about learners' own experiences foraging for and growing food. Do TPR to connect actions and vocabulary. See this link for some ideas for Phase I learners on using TPR and song for learning new vocabulary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJuOR9jTpV4

2. Talk about foraging in Canada - do people do it? Where? Why? What times of year?

3. Collect some edible leaves and flowers and have your students take photos of them, or trace / draw them.

4. Compare shapes, sizes and colours of leaves and flowers.

5. Take your class on a walk around the block to pick your own salad. Follow or make a map while you are at it!

6. Sample all the edibles and describe the taste, texture, and smell.

7. Have a local guest speaker come to class and talk about edible weeds.

8. Read a flyer (adapted as necessary) about a course on this topic: http://haltonenvironment.net/?tribe_events=eat-your-weedies-2

9. Find and follow some recipes using edible weeds. Write your own recipe.

10. Read and discuss issues around excessive foraging / harvesting (adapted as necessary): http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/4034957-foraging-is-fine-but-not-on-rbg-property/

 Garlic Mustard 

Some recipes are here: http://the3foragers.blogspot.ca/2014/04/garlic-mustard-recipe-roundup.html

Wood Sorrel (has yellow flowers) - Check out the warnings before you eat this.

Be careful, though! If you cover this topic with your learners, be sure you are providing all the correct and relevant information. Some edible plants may have look alike plants that are poisonous.

Beautiful Things - Spring Bulbs

Morning Warm-up: 15 minutes

Brainstorm descriptive words for the daffodils and hyacinths using the senses of touch, smell and sight.

How does it feel?

soft, flat, squishy, smooth

How does it smell?

nice, fresh, fragrant, strong, sweet

What do you see?

purple, yellow, ivory, green stems, jar, water

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.

Amaryllis Bulbs

There is nothing quit like getting your hands dirty when it comes to learning ESL! 

In November there are endless supplies of forced bulb kits that you can purchase in local garden centres or grocery stores. It is wise to compare prices so that you can get a deal, and do not blow your budget doing this kind of project. 

This year I chose to do one plant for my morning class and one for my afternoon class rather than one plant for each student. At the end of the term, students entered their name in a draw to take the plant home.

To start, I discussed all the relevant vocabulary with my students including soil, a pot and saucer, bulb, water, and roots. This could be done orally only or supported with a diagram to label. I explained the process of what we would do orally. 

Inspired by horticultural therapy workshops I have attended, I had the students dump the soil into a big pot and slowly add nice, warm water from a pitcher to the soil. Students then mixed up the soil with their bare hands. You could provide gloves. It is always best to start with moist soil.

Then we poured about three quarters of the soil into the pot, nestled the bulb in, and filled in the space with the rest of the soil. Finishing up with a thorough watering, we were set to let more language learning happen. 

At this point you could have the students describe the the process to you and write the simple directions using a Language Experience Approach.

This year, we started a measurement chart. Each Monday we would write the date, and measure the growth of the plant using a ruler in centimetres. This continued for four weeks. Longer would have been better as we did not end up seeing our amaryllis bulbs bloom. The lucky draw winner was able to have it bloom in her house. 

We reviewed the chart weekly, learned how to read and write in a chart and built competency in measuring using a ruler.

Outcomes: Listen to and follow instructions, copy words and sentences, use a ruler to measure height, read and write numbers, read and write in a chart.