Taking Action & Planting a Garden

Our current Math Investigation is all about MEASUREMENT! We try and integrate our Math Investigations with our current Unit of Inquiry and plan fun engaging investigations in which students can take action and apply their math skills in the real world. 

We posed the questions, "what does a vegetable garden look like and what does it need?" and had students draw a picture of a garden in their inquiry journals. Almost all the students drew pictures of nice straight lines of plants and identified that a garden needs water and sun. As our last Unit of Inquiry was all about how we organize ourselves, students also identified that a garden is organized in rows and some gardens have labels to identify the type of plant. 

We then had students expand their thinking further and asked them to think what Math skills would be needed to plant a garden. Students engaged in a Think Pair Share (think big, pair with a partner and share your thoughts) and then each pair shared with the class and together we made a list of possible Math skills we could use. We will be using lots of different Math throughout this investigation but our main focus is on developing our estimation skills and measuring length and height. 

The students then organized themselves into groups and we discussed what kinds of vegetables we will be growing in our garden and how to plant each vegetable. We are growing cucumbers and squash so that we can measure how long their vines will grow, and we are growing peas, beans, and onions to measure how tall they grow. We then decided to also plant carrots, radishes, and lettuce because we know these vegetables are healthy for us. 

Each group of students were given pink yarn as their measuring tool and together as a team they needed to measure out equal rows in their garden. Once they all agreed on where their rows should be they used a shovel and made a row by estimating how deep the row should be. Students then planted their seeds and estimated how far apart they should be and had to make sure that they had enough seeds to fill their rows. We will see how good their estimating skills were when the seeds start to sprout! We are hoping for nice even rows :) 

Working up the soil in the garden plots.

Working up the soil in the garden plots.

Rows have been measured and seeds planted!