One ecosystem: The school garden

Abstract

From students’ closest context, the school allotment; the aim is to stimulate the scientific thinking of students from the second cycle of Primary. Through thinking, experimenting and communicating students should progressively acquire the concept of ecosystem and the relationships in it. There is a double challenge, the first one is that the teaching – learning process is done through the acquisition of students’  new “explanatory models”; the second one is that it is done using a foreign language  that students do no master, English. By means of four learning phases: starting, discovering, structuring and  applying and using the necessary linguistic support, resources and materials, students are able to move forward internalizing the new concepts. Collaborative work in small groups helps success. The article provides several examples on how to handle it.