Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Gatton School

  • Outdoor Learning and doing with NCS Challenge

    On Sunday 17th July, Jeni Walker and Richard Couldrey continued with the 4th year of our annual pattern of work with the National Citizen Service through “The Challenge” – a personal development and social integration programme offered to 15 – 17 year olds which includes a project focused day with a Charity or Community Group.

    Emer Clark, our principle contact and Challenge Mentor, reflected that interaction with Transition Town Tooting challenges the participants to step out their comfort zones and enables them to make a contribution to a local community, which is a huge part of the overall aims of NCS Challenge.

    For us, this project chimes loudly with our aim to work with Young People of all ages – from the Reception Class of Gatton Primary to a poster competition with Graveney Secondary School for Foodival last year, to name but 2.

    The 11 participants of this years NCS Challenge with the results of their labours!

    Read on to find out what happened on the day…
    After an introductory session on Saturday 9th July, the 11 participants spent the week doing 2 tasks for Transition Town Tooting to bring back to the Project Day:

    • fundraising for the project day together – understanding the value of the work we do and championing that to raise money for materials and tools needed.
    • pitching for £50 to a Dragon’s Den of experts, again for the project day.
    Both activities are focused on the ideas and application of the Young People involved – if they don’t creatively engage and bring ideas, the project wouldn’t work. Jeni and I continued this theme, giving a palette of options for the project day and asking the participants to “vote” on the preferred options.

    Rubbing down for painting
    Noticeboard decoration!
    Signs from re-use bed slats

    During the project day, we completed…

    • Re-covering the Rainwater Catchment – a necessary bit of maintenance for this Gatton Primary Project of 2013.
    • Sign making and information board design and making – a wonderful addition to the garden for us to better communicate what is growing and the range of projects to visitors new and old.
    • Bottle Greenhouse repairs – another Gatton Primary School project, this time from 2015, that needed a dose of TLC.
    Back to Emer for closing remarks, “The feedback was very positive. On the whole these teams had never been involved in this kind of community project before, but they got involved and by the end they certainly all learnt something new and had a really enjoyable day! It was great to hear the stories about the day-all of them revealing just how stuck in and creative this project allowed the young people to be.”

    Thank you Challengers for your work in all aspects of this part of your programme! Richard and Jeni

  • Growing together, Learning together, Working together: three years of Outdoor Learning in Gatton Primary School’s own words

    Early in May we held a delightful celebration of three years’ shared experience of the outdoor learning project between Gatton Primary School and Tooting Community Garden. 
    You can look at that blog report by clicking here. 

    The sun shone on us all and lit the mosaic made at the school with every pupil involved. 
    Among the natural images the tiles spell out the three phrases that are the title of this post.

    What is outdoor learning? ‘OL’ covers many activities (not only gardening) and settings. OL offers opportunities for surprising and diverse impact on participants –not fixed or one-size–fits–all.

    Have a look at this earlier TTT post on outdoor learning with younger children from Gatton School.
    Also, click on OUTDOOR LEARNING in the Quick LInks at the top of this web page for stories from 3 years of the project.

    We want to share Gatton School pupils’ own words about their experience of the project. Young people from Year Six (10 & 11 years old) made confident and touching short speeches at the celebration, and you can read the texts here. 


     All the statements are fascinating, and I’ll quote just parts of what 4 different pupils said:

    • “For over three years now our school has worked as a team to create these projects which you see before you. Team work is necessary in our lives and Gatton School has used this advantage to work as a team and benefit the environment”
    • “We can cultivate land together and learn more social skills when we are engrossed in doing gardening together as either a family or as a community”
    • “Taking part in such activities even improves our Design & Technology skills and encourages children to do something that benefits them as well as having fun doing so. D&T inspires children’s creativity and pushes them to think about important ways to support Mother Nature” 
    •  “Nature plays an important part in every religion and it is everyone’s responsibility to take care of it. We strongly believe that this community garden has brought us together and closer than ever before”


    I asked Rifat Batool, Head of Gatton School, to share some of her vision for establishing and continuing the project. She said:

    “Outdoor and engaging learning is a strong aspect of our work at Gatton School. The various projects carried out in the community garden over the past 3 years have allowed pupils to see first-hand how much we can do together as part of a strong partnership committed to learning. 

    We continually challenge our thinking and way of learning to drive for more innovative ideas to enhance learning even further. This allows pupils to see that so much is possible when using creativity, imagination and sense of purpose. 

    This partnership and celebration represents the coming together of people from different backgrounds and interests  and is an amazing representation of teamwork, collaboration and mutual respect”.

    TTT feels honoured to be part of three years of positive experiment, and grateful for the commitment shown by the children, Gatton School staff, Mushkil Aasaan the owners of the garden site and our own team, rain or shine.

     
    Thank you all, and we’re looking forward to the next three years!
    – Charles

  • Celebrating Community Outdoor Learning with Wandsworth’s Mayor

    This afternoon a formal celebration of three years of Community Outdoor Learning with Gatton School took place at the Tooting Community Garden, attended as guest of honour by the Mayor of Wandsworth, Councillor Nicola Nardelli, plus site owner Naseem Aboobaker of Mushkil Aasaan and Rifat Batool, Head at Gatton School. 
    The celebration was joined by many of the children, staff and volunteers who have contributed to the development of the garden and the Outdoor Learning programme.

    The Mosaic and Vertical Garden

    The Mayor officially opened the vertical garden made by Year 6 children in recent weeks as well as unveiling the mosaic curated by artist Kirsteen Ritchie and made with the help of many of the children at school.  
    Naseem expressed her thankfulness for the community connections made in the garden and a group of the children read out their own tributes and reflections on the garden projects.  
    Rifat spoke about the educational value of the outdoor projects over the past three years.

    A community collaboration


    Mayor Nicola Nardelli & Naseem Aboobaker

    The Mayor with Gatton School Year 6 children

    We’re very grateful to all who took part on a lovely day to celebrate this project.
    More to follow …

  • Bringing local cultures and faiths together with outdoor learning in Tooting Community Garden

    We’re proud to be helping with a new outdoor learning project in the Community Garden with Gatton Primary School and the Mosaic Jewish Primary School

    Our Community Garden-based project with Gatton School has run for nearly three years. Gatton is a Muslim primary near Tooting Broadway – click here for lots of our earlier reports.
     
    The Head at Gatton Scool, Rifat Batool, has always been keen to extend the project to capitalise on ‘Garden’ learning opportunities for building community links plus vivid SMSC education. 
     
    SMSC is Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural development, which is linked strongly to schools’ citizenship curriculum content.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

    Rifat Batool has met an enthusiastic ally in Kate Baum, Head of the Mosaic Jewish Primary School. 
     
     
     
     
    This is a first exciting step in bringing together two Wandsworth borough faith communities in a new way, and facilitating a new chapter of shared outdoor learning. Both schools are Ofsted ‘Outstanding’, and this creative experiment is an example to all.
     
    After planning in the autumn, last week on a sunny day in Tooting a Year 1 group from Gatton were joined by children from the Mosaic Jewish School. The photos tell the story:
     
    Examining pictures of the diverse school activities in the Garden since March 2013.
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Sorting garlic bulbs and separating the individual cloves. 
    Which way up to plant them?


     
     
     

    Measuring the plot and cutting string to mark the row.
     

     
     
     

    Planting the garlic cloves.
    Later in the summer we’ll save some to cook dishes at both schools for the Tooting Foodival in September.
     Close encounters.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    The Mosaic Jewish School is starting a school garden at their new location in Roehampton. TTT and Gatton School’s facilitation experience – including growing and nature, awareness and teamworking games, building the rainwater harvesting classroom, the insect hotel and the bottle greenhouse – gave the visitors energy and plenty of ideas to add to their own garden and learning plans.

    Children from both schools will continue be involved in joint plans. We can’t wait to see what develops, and we’ll share news on this blog.
     
    Please get in touch with us at TTT if you would like to know more, or contribute to this project.
     
     

  • So what is outdoor learning?

    For the past 2 1/2 years, TTT has been running outdoor learning classes with pupils from Gatton, a local primary school in the community garden. From weekly sessions with Reception and Year 1 classes, to 7-week projects with the Year 6 students, the classes encompass a huge range of cross-curriculum learning, developing new skills and vocabulary and allowing the children to fully interact with nature in the safe and beautiful environment of our garden.

    But I still get asked regularly, what exactly is outdoor learning? So, here’s a brief example of my class today, on a beautiful autumn morning with a lively Year 1 group…

    After warm greetings and not-at-all-exaggerated reports on how much they had grown over the summer holidays, the children discussed the different seasons, today’s weather and how the sunshine made them feel: happy, bright and a bit sweaty! We then looked at some of the plants we had been growing – a cherry tomato that I picked just before they arrived and a beetroot. They were very excited to discover that beetroot acts as a natural dye and took great delight in getting a red thumb. We also went to look at the green and yellow pumpkin that was growing in the vegetable beds.

    Then we played an energetic game of seek and find, bringing back different numbers and colours of grasses, leaves, pinecones, sticks and acorns. The children learned that the squirrels love to eat acorns and hide them away so that they can eat them later in the winter; we found lots of buried acorns in the garden – sorry squirrels!

    And then, while half the group help collect objects for the Big Draw, the other half used trowels (remembering the safety instructions I taught them last year) to dig up the old pea plants in their little veg bed. The plants went on the compost heap to be recycled in the garden. We all put our hands into the freshly dug soil to feel how it was drier on the top and damper underneath but was also loose like crumble mix. And the numerous worms that were unearthed during the process were all gently and kindly transported to the bush where rumour has it they were having a big worm party…

    Finally, after making big shapes, small shapes and star shapes, the children exploded with an impressive “Acorns!” for their “word jump”. Exit one group of happy, rosy-cheeked, energised children.
    Sharon

     

  • The Great Greenhouse Build – we need your help!

    Our current outdoor learning project with Gatton School is to build a greenhouse in the community garden made from recycled plastic bottles (see picture below – this is what we hope the finished greenhouse will look like). The year 6 pupils come to the garden for an hour a week to work on this and despite lots of hard work on their behalf, it is slow going. After the Easter holidays, we have just two more lessons (ie two hours!) to finish the project. 
    Clearly this is going to be impossible – currently we have completed two side walls of the greenhouse (below), but we still have the back wall, the front wall with a door, two roof panels and two gable ends to make, and then we have to fit all the pieces together! Plus we have many more plastic bottles to cut.
    So we really need some volunteers to rally round and help out. At the first community session during the Seed Swap we had some great helpers and managed to build a wall of the greenhouse.
    Here’s how you can help:

    Because two more hours with 12x 10-year-olds isn’t going to be enough to finish the build, Sharon will be hosting some working parties in the garden in the Easter school holidays. Please come and help – we REALLY NEED YOU! There are tasks for all abilities so don’t feel you need any particular skills to make a contribution. If you have a hammer or a cordless screwdriver and can bring them along, even better.

    The drop-in sessions will be from 12pm-4.30pm on:
    Good Friday April 3
    Thursday April 9
    Friday April 10

    The Community Garden is at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN.
    We’re tucked in behind the big red-brick house at that address, with entrance through the black fence to the left of the building. We’ll have a sign on the road.

    Bring your friends, bring your family (there’s even a playground for little kids to occupy themselves). And if you know anyone else who might be interested in helping out, please spread the word. The more the merrier. It really is good fun and hugely satisfying.
    If you would like to come along, or have any questions, please drop us a line at TootingCommunityGarden@gmail.com or the Tooting Community Garden Facebook page so we know how many people to expect.

    Hope to see you at the garden!

  • Bottle Greenhouse action Sunday March 8th, 1100-1300 at Tooting Community Garden

    When you were at school, was your 
    classroom outside in the sun?

    We’re building a plastic bottle greenhouse at the Tooting Community Garden, along with Year Six from Gatton School. 

    That means the children are preparing bottles that would otherwise be added to local waste or recycling. They are measuring the site and problem solving for the construction, all during the weekly outdoor learning sessions.

    The whole school community has been collecting 2 litre clear plastic pop or water bottles (that’s the kind we need) since the autumn…every week, the children come loaded with bags of bottles. We’ll use well over 1000. (Anyone welcome to bring bottles to the garden on any Sunday).

    This weekend, in the normal Sunday Garden session from 1100-1300, all welcome to help us catch up a bit with the repetitive but deeply satisfying task of cutting, washing and piling up (hundreds of) our plastic bottles. Yes it is addictive.
    We’ll have the kit – and if you have a favourite pair of sharp scissors, do bring them along. 
    Not all the jobs involve cutting – there’s something for everyone of all ages.

    Please come along!

    The garden is at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN. We’ll post any last minute info on both the TTT and the Tooting Community Garden facebook pages. Not to tempt fate…..the weather forecast is good. 

    Bottle greenhouse made by another school

  • Insect Hotel – Project Complete, first invertebrates move in!

    A lot has happened since the insects last blogged: 3 sessions with Gatton Primary, Christmas, New Year and most all of January! High time we caught you up.

    The last 3 sessions with the school where filled with habitat creation. Each week we looked back at the 15 minute “mini-hotels” during the first 4 sessions and were delighted to find lots of tenants. Wood lice, worms, centipedes and millipedes had moved in to the nooks and crannies.

    On Tuesday January 20th, we convened a celebration with 7 student reps and 2 VIPs… our local Councillor from Wandsworth Council, Candida Jones and Chris Young from RHS Campaign for School Gardening. TTT contributors to the project also came along, as did teachers from Gatton School. We’re delighted you could all come, thank you for sparing the time.

    The Insect Hotel is named! The 7 Student Reps with Rifat Batool, Headteacher and Chris Young, RHS  Regional Campaign for School Gardening Advisor, London.

    Read on to read the words of the Student Reps, what was their experience?

    After a brief welcome, it was over to the students to tell us about the experience form their point of view before the official naming of… wait for it… “Bugs’R’Us” Insect Hotel! Here’s excerpts of what the 7 children said:

    “The project that we have been working on (The Insect Hotel) has helped us develop a sense of responsibility as well as a variety of hands on skills like sawing, drilling, construction and of course our weekly search for the “bugs” that have taken shelter in our mini hotels.”

    Of the mini-hotels, the children said…
    “…it was always interesting to come back the next week to see what creatures were visiting and which “rooms” they preferred. Darker, gloomier and smaller seems to be the attraction.”

    “We were amazed to discover the hidden crevices that bugs seem to enjoy visiting when we created our mini hotels, to get an idea of the habitats of different creatures in the garden.”

    And of being in a natural environment – not an everyday experience in our urban setting…

    “We were quite amazed with ourselves to know that we could actually hold a worm in our hands and not run for cover.”

    And of the experience as a whole…
    “We have learned the importance of being eco-friendly, recycling our waste and the amazing role that “bugs” play in our environment.”

    “Overall, we had a wonderful and memorable experience and hope we come back here to contribute towards another project very soon.”

    Over the next weeks and months we’ll gently add habitat to the Hotel and label up the different niches we have created. We’re also starting a conversation about how to share learning about the project. Should you want to hear our experience in more detail – do email transitiontowntooting@gmail.com.

    A big thank you to Naseem Aboobaker and all at Mushkil Aasaan, the local charity who own the site and continue to encourage us to garden and teach at Tooting Community Garden.

    And thank you to Ms Syeda and Ms Shazia at Gatton School for leading the Eco-Schools project and checking permissions for photos for this blog week in week out!

    And the teachers and teaching assistants from Gatton School, Mr.Amin, Ms.Fathima, Ms.Neelam for your engagement at the garden and parallel work in the classroom – the students were really well prepared!

    And finally, a big THANK YOU to all the volunteers from Transition Town Tooting who contributed their time, energy and application to the project.

  • Insect Hotel – trash to treasure (of sorts…)

    Have you ever thought about how much material gets used once and thrown away? Or is not financially worth re-using? Or how most people won’t be satisfied buying something second hand, it has to be new?

    Somewhat in tune with Transition Network’s December theme of “Less is More”  I thought it would be of interest to look at the materials we are using in the Insect Hotel build.

    The structure is supported on waste flag stones donated to the garden. The four uprights used to be fence that ran across the garden and was blown down in the gales a year or two ago, the horizontal shelf supports too. Those bracing pieces are temporary…

    Week 5 – all we need now is the habitats… and the bugs!

    Click below to read how the roof was put together…

    This week, the students from Gatton raised the roof, along with David, Sharon, Esther and I. The roof is made of amazing 4b2 timber – this particular stuff came out of our loft when we were lucky enough to convert it a year ago. The booming domestic renovation business is not set up at all to re-use or recycle. Time and money rule, and its cheaper to dump these timbers in a skip than de-nail and re-use – criminal if you ask me, imagine a waterfall system of being passed onto smaller and smaller projects, but that’s another idea for another blog. The tiles too came from our job.

    Detail showing roof structure and re-use timber and tile

    If you need any of these materials, just go for a bike ride and find a house wrapped in scaffolding and ask the builders. Chances are, they’d be more than happy to offload it too you (you might need a bigger vehicle than a bike to transport it!) as it reduces their waste costs and so increases their profit as this is already figured into a fixed price to the client.

    The only thing new so far on the build is the tile batons – I couldn’t find any re-use ones, unfortunately. However, when I went to buy them, I found out my local timber merchant has stacks and stacks of pallets, considered an inconvenient waste and were kind enough to drop 5 of them round to the garden – that’s the rest of the shelving material sorted! The simplest Insect Hotels are made from skips, so if you’re looking to do one… check out here for pallet-based inspiration.

    And here for a previous blogpost on innovation in building waste re-use.

  • Insect Hotel: Looking back, looking forward – re-using all the way

    It’s been 4 1/2 weeks since we started the Insect Hotel build. In the Tuesday sessions with Gatton Primary, we have welcomed 40 students to the garden. We have shown them flint tools found at the site from thousands of years ago, the growing beds created only a few years ago and the Rainwater Catchment constructed with last years Year 6 group.  We’ve asked “why an insect hotel?” , measured and cut the structure of the Insect Hotel and made 4 experimental habitats. Not to mention handled a number of the mini beasts who might take up residence – to great hilarity.

    So far, the Insect Hotel is 100% made from re-used materials – timber from a fallen fence, paving slabs discarded as extras. We’ll continue to endeavour to do this, trying to reduce waste and show what is possible, with a little effort and energy.

    We’ve seen how TTT volunteers are essential to any projects success and
    prove how together we can go further.

    Watch this space – this week will see the roof going on – topping out! A big moment in any construction project. Following that – we pack it full of enticing habitat and wait for the guests to arrive…