Water collection rain barrels providing repurposed rainwater to new school gardens

It was the final week of school, but the fifth-grade students at Eden Park Elementary School were far from done with their work for the year. Right up to the day before the final day of the school year, the students were hard at work, digging, planting and watering in their new school community gardens.

The Project Based Learning (PBL) unit on water sources and water conservation began earlier in the school year and continued on for many weeks as the students moved through the various stages of the project, from stage one: finding out their authentic learning challenge and its purpose, through to stage five: considerations and conclusions. Stages two, three and four were just as important as the students gathered their information and created prototypes for stage two, considered perspectives and points of view for stage three, as well as actions and consequences for stage four.

“The foundation of Project Based Learning is presenting students with an authentic, real life challenge. The stages promote student agency as they develop solutions based on research and feedback from experts. My teaching partner, Liz Gencarelli, and I facilitate and guide students to develop their solutions on their own; we don’t give them the answers,” said fifth-grade teacher, Karen Casperson.

To that end, the students spent a great deal of time considering their learning challenge, which was how best to repurpose the rainwater that they were collecting in their barrels. The students were grouped based on their proposed solutions such as a frog pond, a pond for fish and racing, filtering the water for drinking, using the water for car washing, using the water to clean the outdoor tables, and creating a greenhouse and garden for flowers and fresh herbs and vegetables.

Ultimately, it was decided by the students as a whole that creating community gardens which would contain fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs, which would be irrigated using the rainwater collected was a solution that could be realized.

Experts were brought in to speak to the students such as Lisa Maloney, April Alix, Tracey Hall, Rebecca Reeves from the Audubon Society and Ryan Kopp, Director of the Storm Water Innovation Center. The students took a field trip to Roger Williams Park and looked at water sources there.

“All of these parts of the project are connected to our fifth-grade science curriculum,” said Casperson. “The first two years of this collaborative PBL with the Audubon Society, our students created artwork adorning storm drains around the school and surrounding neighborhood. This year we were given rain barrels to be placed around the school which led to the idea of creating a garden. The great thing is, although the various stages of the process include creating prototypes, the students don’t often get to see their ideas brought to life. This is the first time they’re seeing that.”

In order to accomplish this, several community partners pitched in. According to Casperson, the school community at Eden Park was very grateful to Whole Foods for their donation of the plants, to Maplewood Nursery for their donation of the dirt, and to the Cranston Rotary for their monetary donation which paid for the raised beds. When it came time to plant the gardens, a small army of volunteer gardeners from the Cranston Garden Club came to the school to help the students make their garden designs a reality.

“Just this morning the front garden directly in front of the school was planted,” said Casperson, as the students showed off their garden which spans a large area in front of the school.

The rain barrels were placed in each garden, with each barrel bearing the hand-painted artwork of the students as well as their names. Art educator Ellen Laprocina, who specializes in mural work, took the artwork that the students had created, featuring themes such as water and nature, and transferred each one of them onto the rain barrels as part of a mural.

Families have signed up for week-long segments of the summer to care for and water the plants, in order to keep the garden going until school begins again.