Oligosaccharides Aren't For Crying
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How do you get students to eat onions? Introduce them to a really cool word-oligosaccharides. It is complex sugars that pass through the large intestine where "good" bacteria digest them. Plus, onions have almost no fat. All the more reason to grow onions! Mr. Painter had purchased red and white onions to plant in the center of the north island of Stonewall Gardens. The students planted, watered, and spread coffee compost on the onions during their weekly outdoor lab excursions. Several classes were to benefit from this planting, but during classroom lessons the student were reluctant to committ to eating the onions after the harvest. With guidance we took the classes out to harvest with a plan to change their minds.
It was explained to the students that part of the harvesting process is to lay the onions out to dry over the weekend in the sun. Students were asked to lay them out in a uniform pattern.
Later that afternoon we took the classes out to continue writing additional information about the harvest. Students have voiced a preference to have class outdoors during the beautiful spring time when our garden is in full bloom.
Students are left to be independent when journaling. It is a pleasure to see the variety of illustrations when they are documenting the day's events. As an educator I feel fortunate to witness the beauty in every journal entry.
Our rubric for journaling includes: dates, temperature, weather/clouds, and measurement.
The onions have dried and students collected them to take back to the classroom.
As a program, Stonewall Gardens, is in the continual process of evolving. We are planting larger crops so instead of sending the entire harvest home, we are able to keep part of the harvest in the classrooms to cook with our students. There were no tears shed during the cooking, well a few from those cutting the onions.
Students decided that harvesting, cooking, and eating no fat was the best diet ever!!!