D-E Middle School students taking Grade 6 Dean Tasha Urbanowski’s DIG (“D-E In the Garden”) Discovery class are learning to “meet the challenges of a changing world and make it better” in their seed-saving unit. In the fall, students collected seeds from the garden on campus, including corn, beans, and sunflowers, and are preparing to plant them for the spring. “DIG uses the garden as its laboratory for this program,” says Ms. Urbanowski, who gives students autonomy in terms of what they’d like to plant for their projects. One experiment was determining which of several varieties of popcorn seeds would actually pop by using a popcorn machine. Christina M. says she enjoys the trial-and-error nature of the class: “If one thing doesn’t work out [as planned], you always will find a solution.” Among the most exciting aspects of DIG is that students “learn by doing,” says Ms. Urbanowski.
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