Vision

Our Action Project serves as a foundation to our school wide initiative of renewing our student-based outdoor education program within CH Norton Public School. We would like to encourage students to be outdoor learners and be environmentally aware of what they have access to locally. We are hoping this will help encourage students to identify plants, native species and insects that are natural factors who positively impact our climate and help to reduce our carbon footprint. Specific native species will benefit our school community and support outdoor education programming spaces for many years to come. By having the students plant and create the space for pollinators and other holistic plants, they will be able to examine and learn valuable information about things like life cycles, ecosystems, traditions from the past and seasonal changes. These things will also allow our school community to strengthen their connection and awareness of the relationship between them and the land we share in Halton District School Board. With various shade providing plants on site, we can encourage students to use our outdoor space and access renewed oxygen in calmer and cooler areas. This will help to provide spaces for students where they will become able to feel safe and secure outside the walls of a “standard” classroom. As the years progress, the growth of the gardens will continue to enhance our outdoor educational spaces. Students will continue to see the impact they have made when they access these renewed spaces on our school grounds. As students continue to be inspired, this will be an exciting way to provide an opportunity for them to leave a legacy. We hope this will help strengthen the sense of community amongst our staff and students and that it will allow them to see the visual, mental and physical impact of their hard work and dedication to their school. As our younger students grow and develop increased curiosity about the world around them, they will be provided with several opportunities to observe change, growth and development of new life around them. We hope that this project will help us to fund a continuum of curiosity through the primary, junior and intermediate divisions at CH Norton Public School.

Action

At CH Norton Public School, we have installed many different plants to enhance our outdoor learning spaces and encourage our school community to spend more time outdoors. We did this in two different areas of our school’s yard. The first area involved installation around the pre-existing outdoor classroom consisting of rocks and wooden tree benches. Our goal was to create a more inviting, more naturalized environment rich with native plants that will provide us with shade and fresh air in the years to come. Adding these plants will help to create a more comfortable and calming space to engage in a variety of different learning activities. The second area where we worked was at the front of our school next to the entrance. As a school, we aimed to create a welcoming, appealing and more sustainable environment for all elements of life including plants and animals. We decided to create a pollinator garden to provide an excellent opportunity for learning and scientific inquiry. Many classes plan to watch and track the life and change that occurs within this environment and we hope that in time, we can add more to further expand our learning potential. Working together helped our school community connect with one another and worked to also build and maintain our connection and appreciation of our land. Throughout the process, we learned about invasive species that are in our gardens like garlic mustard as well as some edible plants like dandelions and wild strawberries. Some classes have committed to managing the care required to maintain these plants through the year by learning the importance of daily watering and monitoring. We look forward to watching the changes that occur as a result of our work and we hope to create opportunities for more involvement as the years go on for all students and staff members at CH Norton Public School.

Reflection & Celebration

It was incredibly to see the students and staff come together as a community and have this project come to fruition. We are so proud of the ownership, the dedication and the collaboration we witness in executing a large scale project such as this. The contextual learning that took place and will continue to take place is a refreshing change from indoor tradition classroom learning. Many classrooms are continuing discussions about pollinators, native plants and the responsibilities associated with caring for other living things in a way that shows respect, responsibility and pride. Our gardens will continue to provide spaces for all students to enjoy, continue to work on and learn about sustainable environments. This was a wonderful way to bring so many people together and we are so very proud of the outcome.

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