Diary Entry - January

January started with a deadline.  In fact, it was an extension to a deadline that had already passed!  The process of putting together prototypes was taking the children far longer than anticipated; although this did at least demonstrate the thoroughness with which their mini-greenhouses were being built and tested.  The fact is it takes time to do things properly.  Teachers sometimes feel they’re hurrying to get through more than can actually be fitted into a single day as it is.  I’d been over-optimistic – too eager to skip through the Technology Stage and onto the Science Stage – whereas there was plenty of science taking place during the design and construction phase.  Year Four, for example, went back to the drawing board after testing the strength of joints using force meters.  What they’d thought was strong wasn’t strong enough.

Groups were given two more weeks to finish making their mini-greenhouses and, to help things along, we decided to give over another whole week to the project.  Rodney Battey, our STEM Ambassador, provided some valuable INSET for staff at this point on the use of adhesives.  Another set of glue guns was purchased using funds from the Rolls Royce Award, along with additional supplies of wood for frames.  And meanwhile, of course, parents continued to donate plastic (in all its forms) filling two enormous dumpy bags!  Wherever you went in the school this month, you’d be sure to come across groups of children measuring, cutting, sticking and exploring ways to adapt and re-use material that would otherwise have been thrown away: from takeaway containers to CD cases; from bubble-wrap to plastic bottles. 

Suddenly, completed mini-greenhouses began to appear on classroom shelves and in the newly-completed Rolls Royce Project Area.  Many of the shapes were innovative and unusual – unlike any greenhouses I’d ever seen before – but then, I reassured myself, remember Eden...!  The Eden Project has been very much on everyone’s minds since the start of our own greenhouse project.  Now – with a new theme for the Spring Term entitled Where does our food come from? – a visit had to be on the cards.  Letters went out and a date was set for March 7th.  Although we’d originally intended the visit to take place in December, early March seemed a better idea as it would be the start of the growing season.  Also, with the greenhouses ready for testing, it would provide a massive boost at just the right time and motivate everyone to raise the plants we’d need from seed.  The cost of the trip – for our admission and the coach hire – would be covered in part by the Rolls Royce Award and in part by the Exmouth Raleigh branch of the Rotary Club, who had also offered help with the labour we’d need to put in a vegetable garden.  There would be no charge to parents and the whole school would go. 

It sounds simple – to ‘put in a vegetable garden’ – but when you’re staring at solid tarmac of an unknown depth, it’s not that simple!  What was once a staff car park, we hoped to turn into a school vegetable garden and a test bed for the children’s mini-greenhouses – to remove a section of tarmac and fill the hole left behind with topsoil.  It took much of January to simply figure out the logistics of how to do this – to ask for quotes, make checks with services and seek help from those in our local community with the skills and know-how to help.

For an account of how we got on with this, you’ll have to wait till February’s diary entry.  January, it seemed, was going to be a month of plans and deadlines: deadlines making – as Douglas Adams put it – that rather nice whooshing sound as they fly past!  Robin James  

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