Schools Education - Kew

New Developments

Wildlife Area
Student Vegetable Plots

SAPS and Royal Botanic Garden's Kew Research and Development Officer

Susan Hunt joined the Learning Programme in September 2005 team to concentrate on developing Kew's resources to help teachers to better promote the plant science elements in biology classes.

In her role, working both at Wakehurst and Kew, Sue is focused on developing resources suitable for teaching plant science to top GCSE and A-level science students in schools and colleges.

The idea for the job came about as a result of the publication of research findings by the Welcome Trust confirming the poor status given to both the teaching and study of plant science and conservation by teachers and students.

The findings of 'Life study: Biology A level in the 21st century' found that teachers find these topics hard to teach and students find them uninteresting and challenging to learn.

"Our aim is to dedicate time and resources to breaking down these barriers through the development of high quality material", says Christine Newton the head of learning at Wakehurst. "It is important to make full use of the cutting-edge science that goes on at Kew and Wakehurst and, through collaboration with SAPS, developing experimental procedures that can be taught in school science labs using equipment and resources available to teachers."

"Susan comes to Kew with very recent experience of teaching biology up to A2 level and with a background in research science", adds Christine. One of her first roles will be to forge relationships with key scientists across the institute and begin to understand the scope and significance of their work."

Initially Sue will be looking for up to three examples that provide a good fit to the requirements of the National Curriculum and can turn into practical plant science lessons that are modern, relevant and interesting.

The funding for this exciting project has come from the Gatsby Charitable Trust and will hopefully open the door for other opportunities with them in the future.

The Wildlife Area

New in 2005 was our schools wildlife area, which incorporates a pond and dipping platform, pit traps for insect observations and a number of specially created insect habitats. The Wildlife Zone was developed by children from two local primary schools who worked with Kew staff to develop, restore and interpret a natural habitat within the Gardens. This resource pack brings together their experiences, and is based on the concepts and techniques that were tested or stimulated as a result of this project.

We offer a programme of activities in this area, and in the past have seen some unusual animals in this unique area of Kew, including grass snakes.

The Student Vegetable Plots

The schools education department have been working with colleagues from the Hardy Display Unit on a 3 year pilot horticultural project with children from a local school. The children have visited Kew for 3 hours once a month, splitting their time between practical horticultural sessions creating a vegetable garden, and working with the Kew Teachers on science, geography, maths activities and games relating to their horticultural sessions.

The pilot is now in its final year and the materials and practical activities will be turned into an education pack for schools to enable them to create their own Gardens and plan cross curricular lessons around it.

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