Community Based Unit of Instruction

The idea of creating a community based unit of instruction was very enticing to me. I love the idea of collaborating with outside resources to make an impact. When Ms. Smith and I first began looking at our units of instruction we knew right away how we wanted to showcase our community based unit of instruction through our Horticulture II course. We planned to have our students create a landscape design for our school courtyard, and that is what we are working on implementing right now.

As we began our advanced landscaping unit, I taught our students the basics of landscape design. This was a review for our students as they all took Horticulture I last year with Ms. Smith. So for our purpose we were just reviewing the basic landscape design symbols and reflecting on how to use landscape tools effectively. Once we completed our review we began our design.

Our students were tasked with designing and implementing a landscape for our school courtyard. Our school courtyard is a very large empty space that offers a lot of opportunities for our future design. Our students were instructed to conduct client interviews of our school principal, students, and staff, to gain an understanding of how our school community wanted the landscape to be used effectively. This gave our students an idea of the purpose and mission our landscape should offer to our Kennard-Dale Family.

Next our students began drawing our landscape design. As they began drawing the design we incorporated two outdoor classroom areas for learning to occur beyond the classroom walls. In addition to our two outdoor classroom, we have an amphitheater area for presentation and ceremonies to occur. We created a large center piece in the middle of our landscape to illustrate our school pride and focalization of our purpose. Lastly, we chose to create a large patio area extending from our library. This area will offer seating and dinning areas. This is essential to this area as our library is being renovated into a more modern learning area for students.

Ms. Smith and I had many partners help us with the development of our desing. Our partners to this point in design are as follows:

• Our High School Principal Heather Venne
• Our Assistant Superintendent Dr. Bickford
• Our head of Maintenance Brian  McCleary
• A local concrete contractor Keith Smith
• A local landscape architect Ann Yost

All of our partners came into our classroom to give their expertise and perspective to our design creation. We are grateful to have their support and partnership as we move forward in our landscape design.

Currently our students are placing their plant material in our design and we are working to create a budget to present to our school board for approval.

I am beyond excited to continue to work with Ms. Smith and our students to create and implement an effective purposeful landscape meeting the needs of our school community.

"When one teaches, two learn"-Robert Heinlein

~Ms. Timmons