In my previous post, Let’s Grow English! School Garden Activities for Teaching English in October, we explored how a school garden can become a wonderful outdoor classroom for learning English through real-life experiences.
But planting is only the beginning! 🌱
As the garden grows, it also gives us plenty of opportunities to teach and practice grammar in a meaningful context. Here are some simple grammar activities we can build around our plants:
🌱 1. Have Got: Describe Your Plant
Once the children have spent some time observing the plants in the garden, we can use them to practice have got. Each child can choose a plant and describe it:
- My plant has got green leaves.
- It has got a long stem.
- It hasn't got any flowers
- It has got three small leaves.
And the real plants provide all the visual support children need.
We can also turn this into a little Guess My Plant game. One child describes a plant while the others try to guess which one it is:
- It has got long green leaves.
- It is small and thin.
- It has got a short stem.
📏 2. Comparatives: Which Plant Is Bigger?
The school garden is also a great place to bring Maths and English together. Children can look at different plants, leaves and vegetables and compare them using pairs of opposites like big/small, tall/short, long/short, thin/thick etc.
Then we can introduce comparatives:
The broccoli is taller than the lettuce.
This leaf is bigger than that leaf.
Finally, give children rulers or measuring tapes and let them collect some real measurements.
How tall is the plant?
Which leaf is bigger?
They can record their results in a simple table and then use the information to make sentences.
📓 3. English Garden Diary
A school garden gives us a wonderful reason to return to English again and again. Why not create an English Garden Diary? Every time the children visit the garden, they can record what they see and what they have done:
October 3rd: We planted peas.
October 10th: The peas are growing.
October 24th: The plants are bigger.
November: Look! We have peas!
In addition, the diary allows children to use different verb forms naturally:
Past simple: We planted.
Present Continuous: They are growing.
Present Simple: The plants are bigger.
Future with will: We will pick them.
For younger learners, the diary could include drawings, labels and simple sentences. Older students could add measurements, weather observations and photographs.
🥕 5. From Planting to Harvesting
Eventually, the waiting is over...
It's time to harvest! 🎉
After all those weeks of planting, watering and observing, children can finally see the results of their work, and, of course, harvesting gives us another opportunity to practice English, asking questions such as:
What did we grow?
How many vegetables did we pick?
What colour are they?
Are they big or small?
Which vegetable do you like?
So that children can count, sort, measure and describe the vegetables they have harvested. We can also create a simple class survey: What's your favorite vegetable? And even turn the answers into a simple class graph, bringing English and Maths together once again.
From the first tiny seed to the final harvest, the school garden gives children something meaningful to see, touch, measure, describe and talk about. And perhaps that's the real magic of growing English outdoors: the language is no longer something that only lives on a worksheet.
It grows alongside the plants. 🌱💚
