Designing a soil literacy school project

You'll design a school project that goes beyond the classroom, like a soil-pH study linked to urban farming or a debate on land-use policies. Templates and case studies will help you balance rigor with flexibility, ensuring projects align with curricular goals while sparking student agency.

Pros:

• Environmental awareness: Enhances understanding of soil's role in ecosystems and biodiversity, food security, and other ecosystem services.

• Interdisciplinary learning: Integrates biology, chemistry, geography, maths, environmental science — and social sciences and arts.

• Hands-on experience: Encourages practical learning through soil sampling, testing, analysis, and other work with soil (e.g. gardening).

• Critical thinking: Develops problem-solving skills by analysing soil-related issues like erosion and contamination.

• Living-systems thinking: Learning to relate soil and soil ecology to many other complex systems (food production, water resources, pollution, climate change) and how they interact.

• Sustainability learning: Using soil literacy as a lively example for possible sustainability pathways — sustainable food production, biodiversity, climate protection, personal and planetary health.

• Local focus: Valuing the students' context and the local outdoors and local environment as well as local livelihoods.

• Community involvement: Partner with local farms, environmental groups, or conservation initiatives to give students real-world experiences with soil ecology and protection.

Cons and solutions:

• Resource intensive → Collaborate with local environmental organizations, farmers, community gardens, garden centers or agricultural extensions to access resources, materials, money and expertise. Crowdsource materials from parents or the school community.

• Time constraints → Integrate the project into the curriculum over several weeks or a semester to align with multiple subjects.

• Lack of expertise → Organize workshops with soil scientists or use the CURIOSOIL MOOCs.