Gardening Tasks

Overview: Tasks Related to Gardening

This set of tasks draws on the context of gardening. Students might have experiences with family, community, and/or school gardens that could be leveraged for learning with these tasks. The tasks engage students in mathematical modeling (Mathematical Practice 4) through activities including:

  • Designing a garden plot.
  • Deciding what to plant.
  • Selecting and preparing gardening materials (e.g., soil, fencing, garden pockets).
  • Estimating quantities/amounts of materials.
  • Calculating costs of materials.
  • Communicating final plans and models, material needs, and/or costs to a potential funder.

Specific mathematical content and other mathematical practices connected to tasks are described within the lesson overview of each task.

Gardening Tasks

Overview

The Designing a Garden Task is made up of four parts: Planning a square garden, determining how much compost to buy and the cost of the compost, deciding how to fence in the garden and the cost of fencing, and writing an application for funding. To complete the task, student will develop and apply their understandings of area, perimeter, and linear, square, and cubic measures, and the relationship among those measures. Students can solve the problems by exploring with actual gardening materials or with simulated materials. Those with limited gardening experience will also learn how food can be grown in small spaces.

Student Task Documents

We are including both PDF and MSWord versions of the Student Task document. The MSWord version will allow you to easily edit the task if you wish to do so. The PDF version will maintain the original format. A separate document includes two different tables used to plan square garden. The first table tells how many of each vegetable can be planted per square foot. The second table requires students to determine that number and thus allows students to explore square measurement in more depth. Teachers should use the table that best fits the challenge level for their students.

Lesson Slides

The Lesson Slides include a launch to promote discussion about gardening and outlines of the four parts of the Designing a Garden Task. A link to a gardening YouTube video is provided on slide 2. Teachers are encouraged to use videos of local school or community gardens as a substitute for this slide.

Designing a Garden Task Documents

Wooly Pocket Task Overview

The Wooly Pocket Task asks students to help create a vertical pocket garden. To do so, students must determine the amount and cost of soil needed for their classroom garden and for their grade level garden. The standards in this task included working with standard and decimal fractions, minimizing costs, and volume measure.

Student Task Documents

We are including both PDF and MSWord versions of the Student Task document. The MSWord version will allow you to easily edit the task if you wish to do so. The PDF version will maintain the original format.

Lesson Slides

The Lesson Slides include the different routines outlined in the Lesson Overview. The slides have been color-coded to help identify the different levels of the routines.

Wooly Pocket Gardens Resource Files

Student Work

Four student work slides are included. The first titled Warm-up shows that questions the class generated before they started the task. Three student solutions are included.