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Land Management Programme |
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The overall aim of the Land Programme
is to foster the children's inherent love for and sense of connection
with the natural world and to develop a progressive understanding of
the skills, qualities and attitudes required for the earth to provide
us with our needs in such a way that she is not impoverished but
actually enriched by our labour.
The basic
method for achieving this is for the individual teacher to have an
overall grasp of the Land Programme so as to be able to see ahead of
the children, know where things are going in the longer term and so
have a sure
grasp of what to concentrate on in the present.
Having this overall grasp means seeing ways in which the content of the
land Programme relates to the rest of the year's curriculum, and so
making connections 'in the moment'.
It also means being able to use anticipation to
stimulate the children's interest, secure in the knowledge that we're
not just planting marrows and potatoes year after year!
The children must be able to feel our overall grasp,
as they do from a Main Lesson content, so that they can accept the
Programme as an integral' part of their education, not a
'fringe'or'filler' activity.
Our overall
method in the teaching is to present as wide a picture as possible to-
begin with to set the context, engage interest and feelings, and then
narrow down to specifics. These include:
- What we're going to do
- Why and how we're going to do it
- Doing it
- Follow-up discussion/observation and
- appropriate written work (from class 3)
The overall Aims imply that as well as teaching
skills we are also working consciously with the qualities and attitudes
needed for success with working with the earth: eg patience,
perseverance,' flexibility, co-operation (in sharing out tasks),
thoroughness, mindfulness, pride in the plot's appearence, care of
tools.
In order to foster the right working
attitude it is important that basic working habits are agreed between
us and put into practice from the start: eg as for Games, there MUST be
a change of footwear when doing Gardening, ie WELLIES and spares kept
to hand out if necessary.
The right
TOOLS are obviously fundamental to our Methods! We need to write out a
shopping list for the parents so that we can collect a decent range of
gardening tools which will be properly stored, so that each tool has
its recognisable home. This can be provided in the new shed in the
field. Proper care of tools, putting them away after use etc is an
important part of fostering the right attitudes of thoroughness and
respect and needs to be taught from the start.
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