Using Gardening to Build Community in ELL Classrooms

“Hi Mr. M, is it growing?” Pierre shouted as he burst into the classroom and rushed over to the windowsill to check on Junior. “Plant mwen an, li ap grandi!”(My plant is growing!)

Junior was, well, a plant. A morning glory, to be exact. And in just a few short weeks, Junior became the nouvo selebrite of Room 148.

Teachers working with English language learners (ELL) can run into challenges when it comes to building academic skills, connecting with their classmates, and gaining confidence in their new school environment. Designing an interdisciplinary unit centered around gardening helped my fifth- and sixth-grade students deepen their understanding of environmental care, empowered them to share stories about the people and places they care about, and strengthened their connections to better care for one another. 

Building Curiosity

Begin the unit in a way that encourages students to share prior knowledge about their experiences with gardening. Bring in gardening supplies (small pots, soil, watering can, trowel, etc.) and place them on a table for students to see. Invite students up to take a closer look or even pass things around. Then, pose a few questions: 

• What tools do you see here? What are they used for?
• Has anyone gardened before? What kinds of plants do you like? What plants are common where you currently live or where you lived before?

After we spent some time discussing the gardening tools, several students I rarely heard from began to share more about their experiences with gardening. Plant growing was something most students had a connection to. Almost everyone knew of someone with a green thumb and a love for plants or had a favorite plant or flower themselves. 

While facilitating the conversation, lean into translanguaging (encouraging students to use all the languages they know to help them in the classroom). Tell students they can say something one way and write it another and that they are always invited to share. Students might name a gardening tool in their native language—as the teacher, you can capture that word and write it in English.

If students are having trouble thinking of the name of a plant that they’ve seen before, allow them to draw it or share it in another way. I recommend co-creating a multilingual word garden (wall) with students to track vocabulary learned throughout the unit accompanied by images and definitions. Word walls that students can take words from and put back are especially useful. This helps reinforce language learning while celebrating students’ linguistic diversity.

Let’s Get Digging

Ensure that all students have the necessary supplies they will need to grow their individual plant. Keep in mind that you can repurpose household materials as pots or digging utensils to be environmentally conscious. Additionally, you can turn to colleagues or students’ guardians to ask if they have any materials they might be able to donate to the project. You’ll need a space in the classroom to place the plants where they can get light. 

Group students into “grow pods” (with language diversity if possible) to support each other as they plant and water their seeds for the first time. With these kinds of activities, conversation can happen naturally. However, you can also assign a specific conversation topic to each group related to gardening: Why do people grow plants? What do plants need to grow? 

When students are done planting their seeds, ask them to name and label their plant and then share with the class why they chose that name. This may reveal information about common names from their culture or maybe that they drew the name from a book or movie they enjoy. I tell students that research shows that plants might even grow more when they are played music, loved, and cared for. If you want them to grow, tell them you love them.

The Growing Cycle

Reviewing the plant cycle will be helpful for students to understand what to expect over the next few weeks. Sometimes it can take a while for the seed to sprout, but remind students that so much is happening below the soil that we just can’t see.

As you’re waiting for your plants to grow, lesson possibilities are endless. You may decide to make this unit social justice oriented and consider covering ideas such as environmental racism: Why do some areas have more trees? You may consider centering topics like conservation and climate change: Why do we need to take care of our earth? What does that look like? Perhaps you are thinking about geographic differences: Why can some plants grow in one region but not another? 

For me, each lesson often began with some sort of image analysis with an image related to that day’s topic. I’d ask first convergent and then divergent questions about the image to get conversation flowing. In my lessons, I often used videos from online learning sites such as BrainPop and PBS LearningMedia to show various plant-growing processes. I’d make sure to use subtitles and adjust video speeds according to students’ needs. In addition to images and videos, I used a variety of articles from sites such as Reading A–Z, Newsela, and CommonLit, which often give teachers the ability to adjust the reading levels of passages. 

Using a plant journal or log is an essential component to track both the progress of the plant and for students. In their plant journal, students can complete a variety of tasks such as tracking how tall their plant is growing (using numerical measurements or drawings) or answering different journal prompts. If possible, bring students into the immediate school community to observe other plants. Why do we need trees? How do flowers make people feel? What kinds of foods do plants supply? Students can even do research about a plant native to their home country and interview a family member about the importance of that plant.

Gardening shows measurable progress. As students care for their plants, they learn responsibility and teamwork. Ask students to help water each other’s plants, and encourage them to check on their classmates’ plants when someone is absent. This builds collaboration and a sense of accountability and helps students practice empathy and community care.

Concluding the Unit

Eventually plants may need more space to grow. As the unit concludes, one idea is to take students outside to plant their plants together in a small plot and begin a school garden. Students can also give their plant to someone (family member, neighbor, store owner in the community) and create a guide for them on how to take care of it. Perhaps students may want to take the plant home themselves and continue to care for it on their own.

Either way, the plants will head out of the classroom and into the world. This will symbolize that the plant has grown strong enough to leave the classroom and join a larger community, making space for something or someone new to come. As for Junior, he was placed in a garden box outside the school, where he joined some friends from Room 148 to plant lasting roots in an ever-growing school community.

By incorporating gardening into your classroom, you not only teach students about plants but also create a space where language development, community building, and empathy thrive.