Curriculum ideas: social sciences
Secondary
Use your school orchard to stimulate research and debate about local food and sustainable agriculture. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- With the global population set to hit 9 billion by 2050, discuss commercial vs. organic food production: how will we feed the world's growing population this century?
- Industrial food production and its relationship to fossil fuels: with oil supplies expected to 'peak' around 2010, what are the possible implications for food production and the import, pricing and waste management of the food we eat?
- Where did our orchards and market gardens go? (Use road signs and pub names etc to identify where local food production in your school’s catchment area happened not so long ago). Why has this happened and what may have been the social, economic and political effects?
- ‘Dig for Victory’ provides an example of a policy to increase a country's food security: what can we learn from this and does the concept of food security have relevance today?
- What happened when Cuba had it’s oil supply cut overnight with the collapse of the Soviet Union? How did they manage to produce enough food?
Use the development of your school orchard to inspire an oral history project. Get pupils to find and talk to old people in the area who used to grow apples, worked in orchards, or made cider. Ask them to build up an idea in words and pictures of what the landscape and life of the area was like.
Go International: Fruits have sustained communities - and creativity - worldwide for centuries. Figs, dates, almonds, mango and pomegranates hold the same affection for the young people that enjoy them that apples and plums do for us here. Investigate the culture and traditions associated with indigenous fruits from parts of the world with strong links to your own....
Primary
- Develop a project to explore the UK's rich fruit and orchard games and traditions. Common Ground has a great book to help you in this. Encourage children to think about why games and cultures may have arisen and how they differ from place to place. Design your own based on your own specific local traditions.
- Ask children to place different varieties of fruit / apples on a map of the UK and then the world. Ask them what countries they have eaten apples from. Explore the concept of food miles.
Links
Slow Food UK
A Perry tree can live up to 350 years but what use is this if we don't engage in the reason for the tree being there, understand the land that it stands on and what it can offer us as a community. Slow Food UK is using it's greatest asset, over 50 local groups who are reaching out to the community through their Orchard Project, bringing together communities to ensure the knowledge of our heritage fruit varieties is passed on to the next generation. The first stage of the project is an online survey on the Slow Food UK website to record what you already know about your area.
Think Food and Farming
Think Food and Farming is the exciting legacy project building on the successes of the Year of Food and Farming. It promotes healthy living by offering children and young people direct experience of the countryside, farming and food through growing and cooking activities, and visits to farms.
Lifting the lid...
For a fascinating look into the changing face of UK fruit growing by environmental and social justice activist and Guardian journalist, George Monbiot
Love British Food
For inspiring ideas about how to integrate British food into the curriculum download the Love British Food teachers resource guide.
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