A. Your Questions Answered

Who is 'Plant Life in the Garden' aimed at?

• The Basic Plant ID Card is aimed at children in Key Stage 1/ Lower Key Stage 2, who have already acquired some literacy and computer skills.   Children use a simple template to make a one-sided ID card using a digital photo they have already taken and saved (or downloaded from the Search Zone).  They select short texts and colours from drop-down menus. They also type in two things they have noticed about their plant.We recommend that, at this level, the teacher creates a whole class 'login' account in advance, rather than individual 'login' accounts for each child.
• The Advanced Plant ID Card is aimed at children in Key Stage 2 with more developed IT and literacy skills. Pupils use a template to create a card similar in appearance to the basic card, but with a 'front' and a 'back'.   There are more boxes to fill and room for six 'interesting facts' that they have discovered either by independent research or from the Search Zone on the website.  There is also an option for creating colour-coded sets of cards. 
• Children working independently may wish to create their own individual 'login' accounts. A whole-class project may be easier to manage if the teacher creates just one 'login' account for all the children to use.
• The Search Zone is a searchable database about individual plants and is suitable for use by reasonably fluent readers of Upper Key stage 2 and above, and for the general user.

• It gives an ICT dimension to any project involving gardens, plants or conservation, whether you actually visit a garden or not (although we hope you will!)
• It is ideal as a way of linking Science ('Life Processes and Living Things', 'Scientific Enquiry') and ICT when you take your class to visit a garden. 
• Once at a garden, you can expand into other areas, such as how the garden is laid out (Maths: 'Space, Shape and Measures'), or use the experience of being in a garden as a stimulus to creative work (Art: 'Recording from Experience'; English: 'Creative Writing').
• The process of writing the cards links well to Literacy ('Writing for Information')
• The Search Zone contains a treasure chest of divergent information about each plant. This can be used to link a Plant/Garden project to other areas of the Curriculum, e.g.: History and Geography (Links with cross curricular themes such as Exploration and Discovery), English (Reading: oral tradition, folk tales, fact or fiction?).
• The actual production of the cards, and deciding their final use, could be used as a Design and Technology exercise. 
• Once the cards have been made they can take on a second life and be used in matching or sorting activities, for younger children or, if the information has been systematically collected, as data for further analysis (Maths: 'Handling Data')

At what stage in a Unit of Work could I include making Plant ID cards?

• Making the ID Cards could be an end product, after the pupils have collected the information as part of a structured investigation.
• Or you could create specific ID cards at the start, which pupils then use as part of their plant or garden activity.

How could we use the ID Cards themselves?

• Use them as ID cards to identify the plants that appear in your garden.
• Decide in advance what items of data the children are to collect to put on the cards, and use them as a data source for further study e.g. for comparing particular characteristic of plants in different locations.
• Take pictures of the same plant in different seasons, and make a card for each season.
• Print on both sides of a sheet of A4 card (this will give space for 8 Basic Cards) and laminate, to make reusable I Spy sheets to carry round different zones of the garden.
• Challenge the pupils to invent new games to play with the cards.

What is the Search Zone?

• It is a database of fascinating facts about a wide selection of garden plants, researched and written exclusively for 'Plant Life in the Garden'. Each entry includes a simple description, what the plant is/was used for, its history, where it originated, traditions and stories, wildlife use, outstanding examples etcetera. 
• At present there are about 150 examples, each with an image. Each entry contains links to NCCPG collection holders and other relevant websites for that particular plant.  Eventually, every plant genus will be included where there is a National Collection Holder.
• You can search the Search Zone in several ways, by plant name or by attribute. 
• The text and pictures in the Search Zone can be downloaded by pupils, but are for school use only and should not be reproduced elsewhere.

• As a source of reliable information for the teacher or researcher before or after a garden visit.
• For cross-curriculum work: finding out how plants play a part in History; Literature; Art; Geography as well as Science.
• Pupils creating Advanced ID Cards can use the Search Zone to find out more information to add to the 'Interesting Facts' sections on their cards, or to find out the French, German or Latin names for their plants.
• The importance of cultivated plant conservation can be studied through the various links to the NCCPG website and the relevant National Collection Holders websites.

• The instructions for printing are given as you work through the website. Go to the Personal Zone and follow the steps from here to make your own cards. Then click on View and Print cards.  The preview will show all the cards available, and you select those you wish to print.  You can fit 4 basic cards onto one A4 sheet, or two Advanced cards.  Print onto paper, card or photographic paper depending on your printer. Once printed, cut the cards up.  The Advanced cards will be printed with 'front' and 'back' showing side by side. To make them truly double-sided, either fold them in half, or print the cards again on the reverse side of the sheet of paper/card.

How do I use the ID cards for card games?

• The Basic Plant ID Cards have 8 colour options, so you could, for example, use the same picture, or plant, several times over, varying the colour strip. Children could collect sets, or match colours. There are numerous variants of this idea.
• The Advanced Plant ID Cards have 8 colour options for the heading and up to 8 colour options for  'categories', which pupils can decide for themselves. Encourage the pupils to work out for themselves how to make their card set, perhaps by looking at how other card games work, such as 'Happy Families' or 'Snap'
• For example, you might decide to create 8 families of cards: A 'blue' family, a 'red' family, a 'green' family etc. The family colour will be used at the top of the card.   Then you decide that each family will have 5 members, each belonging to one of 5 colour-coded categories. The 5 categories should arise from the plants you have studied, and you my need to discuss these with the pupils. e.g. 'coniferous trees', 'poisonous plants', 'plants with yellow flowers', 'prickly plants', 'plants growing against a wall', 'plants from America'  'plants used for food'.  In this case, a complete set of cards will consist of 40 cards, and each colour combination will only appear once.

What goes into the Gallery Zone?

• The cards in the Gallery are the pupils' own work. They are selected, by the website administrator, from all the cards saved by users in their accounts.  We don't edit them, but we try to choose examples that are factually correct, and of good quality.   However, they should not necessarily be regarded as 'authoritative'.
• The Gallery content will change from time to time, to reflect what has been produced.

B. SUPPORT MATERIAL TO DOWNLOAD.

Click on any of the underlined titles below to view additional downloadable resources for 'Plant Life in the Garden'

• BOTANICAL WORDS
• WORDS TO DESCRIBE PLANTS.
• WORDS TO DESCRIBE LEAVES
• WORDS TO DESCRIBE FLOWERS.
• WORDS TO DESCRIBE FRUITS
• WORDS TO DESCRIBE ROOTS
• WORDS TO DESCRIBE SOIL
• WORDS TO DESCRIBE HOW PLANTS ARE GROWN AND MANAGED
  
  
• 'WOOD FOR BURNING' (traditional rhyme)
• 'Well done' certificate.  Use this EGHN certificate to award recognition to any pupil who has done well while working on a 'Plant Life in the Garden ' project.
• 'Search Zone' Plant List.   This lists all 150+ plants included in the Search   Zone, grouped under Bedding Plants, Bulbs, Climbers, Herbaceous, Shrubs and Trees. The plants are listed alphabetically under their Latin name and the English names are also given.
• Bibliography.  Useful General and Specialist books for the teacher or researcher.