Ecosystem Research Stations

By:

 

 

Student crops

 

Organized throughout the garden by grade, with a row for each class ad a plant for each student. An entire class     plants the same crop, based on student input.

 

 School-year crops include broccoli, carrots, potatoes, spinach, cabbage. Summer crops include okra, various peppers, lettuce, swiss chard, green beans, black eyed peas, curry, basil, mint, oregano, rosemary, lima beans, purple hull peas, and sometimes tomatoes in the summer. Summer crops are managed by garden instructor and volunteers.

 

One plant for every student (575+ this year) in each of two growing seasons. Students plant, tend, and harvest their personal plants. This gives them a strong sense of ownership and allows for collecting data about one single plant and its growth. 

 

Students measure their plants weekly, record in words and drawings any changes, and discuss variables that might influence its growth and health (temperature, water, etc.) and observe interaction with other organisms (pests or predators -- insects, rats, etc.)

 

Other regular measurements that students take include total precipitation for the week, wind direction and speed, cloud cover, and the temperatures of the air, soil, compost, and water.

 

 Some classes conduct investigations with their plants. For example, the fifth grade tested the effect of a commercial organic product (Thrive), which introduces microbial activity into the soil to enhance soil biology and thus enhances root growth.

 

Students bring home their harvest each season for cooking at home. This year we plan to offer cooking classes at Stonewall and use some garden produce for those classes. Harvest is always fun, and kids really love it. They know exactly how many potatoes they harvest and how many their classmates got!

 

 

 

 

Wildscape

Originally planted in 1998 and then certified for the National Wildlife Federation a couple years later

 

Includes more than 50 varieties of Texas native plants, including

Turks Cap

Lantana

Sunflowers

Bluebonnets

Larkspur

Coreopsis

Echinacea

Native grasses

Rockrose

Prairie Verbena

 

Diversity of plants offers many learning opportunities

• Observation and discussion of the range of plant varieties, their adaptations, life cycles, and survivalstrategies
• Opportunity to witness plant life cycles without significant human interference
• Organism variety promotes vocabulary development and understand of classification systems
• Interaction of other organisms who visit/live in the wildscape (insects, arachnids, rodents, reptiles, etc.)provide ample opportunities for discussion about the ecosystem and how its element work together tocreate balance.

 

Other, less obviously scholastic benefits:

Beautiful stretch along a busy urban street, known to many on and off campus

Offers kids the freedom to explore a swath of nature and its various elements-more life and diversity inthis stretch than most traditional school landscapes.

 

Note that wildscape currently includes plants going to seed; we leave them in order to be able to 1) re-seed the area, and 2) discuss plants' strategies for survival, including seed structures and disbursement

 

 

 

 

Compost Area

 Compost area includes plant materials from the garden (weeding, harvested plants), donated mulch and coffee     grounds, and occasionally neighbors' compost materials.

 

Compost also found in garden paths; plant materials sometimes buried under mulch to speed up the process of decompostion

 

What students do and learn:

Bring their plant materials to the compost area and discuss the process of decompositon

Sift compost to get finer particles for incorporating into the soil and learn mixtures and solutions

Discuss what comprises soil

Learn how plants get nutrients cycles, including nitrogen and carbon

Look at samples under a microscope (1st-5th grades) to examine soil components and organisms

 

 

 

 

Stonewall Chickens

25-year tradition to hatch chicken (and other fowl species) eggs in the Stonewall classroom each spring

 

Informal program for years managed by Bill Pitillo, a sign language interpreter at Stonewall and avid chicken fan

 

Students witness the eggs hatching, then watch the chicks grow and develop until their size made it necessary to adopt them out to the Stonewall families and area farms.

 

During their in-classroom lives, the chicks fascinate the students and are thus easily turned into the focus of a range of student activities-writing, math, biology, etc. 

 

The Peep at the Coops Tour of East Dallas Coops (April 2010) was the first tour of backyard coops and clocks who lived in them. The tour brought sponsorship dollars, as well as t-shirt and raffle ticket profits. These funds were used to build the Stonewall Gardens coop, custom built for The Custom Coop Company. Peep at the Coops Tour for 2011 brought over 2,000 visitors to Stonewall Gardens and raised approximately $10,000 for the model program.

 

Now these chickens call Stonewall home (all hatched last spring):

Hilary- a 2 year old Silkie

Rosie- a copper-colored Samara

Pearl- a black Samara

Georgie- named after Georgia O'Keefe, another Samara

Janet- a Buff Orpington

Phyllis- a Polish-Crested named after Phyllis Diller

 

The Stonewall Jackson community visits the coop daily, in hopes they may get a fresh egg from the hens.