Whistler Elementary

Space To Grow Schoolyard Tour

Overview

Your Space to Grow schoolyard is a fun and interactive place where you can do almost anything...outdoors! The possibilities include: classroom instruction, recess, physical education, school events, community gatherings, sporting events and gardening. Take some time to get to know the space with your students and fellow educators.

This virtual schoolyard “tour” will help you get acquainted with some of the common elements in Space to Grow schoolyards and set the stage for ensuring your students become good stewards of the schoolyard. Remember to practice  COVID-19 safety guidance  at all times in the schoolyard.

Revisit this at the start of each school year with your classroom and remind your students to enjoy the space safely—you could even consider using this content to guide your students to become schoolyard ambassadors and relay important topics to parents and schoolyard visitors. Tips and resources are included to spark ideas, but please be creative and add your own!

Whistler Elementary Space To Grow Site Plan Illustration

Class Pledges

Here are some “pledges” you can ask your students to take at the start of each school year to remind them to respect and steward the space. To build your classroom community and set expectations for your students while being outdoors, you can also display these class pledges in a visible area and reference prior to going outside. Add others that are relevant to your classroom, too!

  • We will treat all living things gently and with compassion - including trees, plants, animals, insects and each other.
  • If we see trash or litter in the schoolyard, we will pick it up and put it in the trash can, even if we did not put it there.
  • We will walk and run around - not through - the garden.
  • If a ball accidentally falls into the garden, only one person will get it, being mindful of the plants.
  • If we are working in the garden, we will be safe with our tools.
  • We will not move anything in the garden - the plants in the garden have found their forever homes and should not be dug up or moved.
  • We will ask before touching plants in the edible garden.

Welcome to the Whistler Space to Grow Schoolyard!

At the entrances of your schoolyard you will note there are signs welcoming everyone. There are also etiquette statements that remind people to respect the space and outline the schoolyard hours. The schoolyard is open for use by the community after school hours and on weekends and should never be locked.

You will note several partners listed on the welcome sign, along with some information about the Space to Grow program. Your schoolyard was built with funding from Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Department of Water Management and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. Healthy Schools Campaign and Openlands manage the Space to Grow program and will remain close partners with your school.

Athletic Courts

Your schoolyard includes athletic courts striped for basketball, volleyball, tennis and/or other sports (depending on which sports your school community identified). Your students will enjoy playing before or after school as well as during recess and PE. Since your schoolyard is open outside of school hours, you will find other community members—and parents, too—will enjoy use of these courts. You can also use these to host healthy fundraisers, summer tournaments or other fun community events. 

    Outdoor Classroom

    An enormous body of research documents the benefits of time spent outdoors and improved academic outcomes for students who have daily access to nature. You can find more information and interesting research on this starting on page 34 of your  Space to Grow Teacher Toolkit .

    Your outdoor classroom has seating for one entire classroom at a time, and can be used as a setting to teach any lesson. Staff can work together to create a schedule for using the outdoor classroom. Be sure to schedule time in the outdoor classroom that does not conflict with recess, which can be distracting. Check out this  sample schedule  that you and your colleagues can use to schedule times to teach outdoors. Your Space to Grow Teacher Toolkit also has a section with tips and tricks for outdoor classroom management—be sure to review those starting on page 36.

    Perennial Gardens with Native Plants 

    Don’t forget to look for the green sign(s) in your schoolyard that says “Native Garden!”

    The Chicago region was once a giant prairie—in fact, Illinois is called the Prairie State because there was once an abundance of prairie grasses across the state. A prairie is a type of habitat with mostly grasses, but also flowering plants and isolated trees and shrubs. Most of the plants found in your schoolyard are prairie plants native to Illinois and have very deep roots—they are made to withstand our climate and soil types. These are great for supporting pollinators and they are perennials, meaning with good stewardship these plants will continue to grow each year.

    Be sure to check out your schoolyard’s  Native Plant ID Guide    with pictures that show all the native plants, trees and shrubs growing in your schoolyard. You can also check out page 45 of your  Space to Grow Teacher Toolkit  for a great lesson plan called Compare and Contrast in the Garden for a fun way to bring the garden into your teaching and learning.

    Teachable Moment!

    The plants in your native gardens have thirsty roots that drink up lots and lots of water when it rains or when snow melts, instead of it running off into the sewers. Native plants have very deep roots that can grow over 10 feet deep and soak up a lot of water. Compare that to typical turf grass that has roots only 2-6 inches deep—that’s a big difference!  Check out this visual  to compare the different root systems.

    Movement Moment

    Garden activities inherently provide a way for your students to spend their physical energy, and using school gardens as a place to promote physical activity and movement can help support your school’s wellness goals. Below are a few quick ideas but you can find more in this  USDA Cooperative Extension  resource!

    • Develop a scavenger hunt that includes finding plants or weeds, and helps keep kids active and moving around outdoors.
    • Incorporate physical activity through garden stewardship activities—raking, mulching, weeding and watering are all great ways to keep kids active in the schoolyard.

    Growing Food in Raised Planter Beds

    These are “edible gardens” where the school and community can learn about and grow food. These gardens support the school’s health and wellness initiatives, and kids who grow food at school are known to adopt healthier eating habits. Once your school is  Eat What You Grow  certified, you can use the produce grown in the gardens inside the school. Students, school staff, parents and neighbors can all become active members of the garden team and help plant, water and harvest what’s grown here. Many of the fruit and veggies are annual plants - such as basil, cilantro, cucumbers and tomatoes—meaning they need to be planted each year. Some fruits and veggies are perennials—such as asparagus, blueberries, chives and thyme—meaning they will come back year after year, and do not need to be planted each year.

    Teachable Moment!

    Instruction in the garden does not have to only mean working in the gardens. Try taking your students outdoors to do the Poetry in the Garden lesson plan, found on page 49of your  Space to Grow Teacher Toolkit !

    Movement Moment

      Gardening itself is a great way to keep kids moving and use up stored energy. Start every gardening session with simple stretching exercises such as lunges, shoulder shrugs and side bends. You can follow stretching with an obstacle course using the garden beds and garden tools (hoses, buckets, etc.) and have students jump over, weave in and out or sidestep around each item.

    Rain Garden

    Don’t forget to look for the green sign(s) in your schoolyard that says “Rain Garden!”

    A rain garden is a shallow depression—a bowl-like area with sloped sides—that is planted with deep-rooted plants and grasses. Your schoolyard’s rain garden uses perennial native plants (see the Perennial Gardens with Native Plants section for more info), but not just any native plant can be used in rain gardens—these gardens have thirsty plants that can survive with having their roots in wet soil for some time. The rain garden collects water from the surrounding surfaces when it rains or when snow melts.

    Teachable Moment

    Be sure to take your students outside for special activities that include the gardens throughout the school year. Below are a few quick ideas and you can find several lesson plans in the  Space to Grow Teacher Toolkit  that you and your students may enjoy!

    • Ask students to research the plants to find their scientific name, common name and any special features.
      • Students can draw or color the native plants and create labels to identify the plants in their gardens.

    Movement Moment

    Spending time outdoors has been shown to have a positive effect on health and learning, and your Space to Grow schoolyard is a great way to leverage those benefits. Since nature supports physical and emotional health, you might try practicing mindfulness in or near your rain garden. Take your students outdoors and try some simple yoga stretches—check out these  Kids Yoga Stories  resources for seasonal lesson plans, inspiration and garden-themed poses!

    Track + Field

    Don’t forget to look for the green sign(s) in your schoolyard that says “Turf Field!”

    If your schoolyard has a track, that means lots of opportunity for physical activity for students, staff and parents alike. Use it during recess, PE or outside of school time for relay races, track and field sports, teacher or parent walking clubs or as a place to host healthy fundraisers such as walk-a-thons.

    Your track may be surrounding a turf field that is permeable, meaning it can hold a lot of water beneath it after it rains. So, not only can it be used for many sports, PE class and family games on the weekends, it’s also helping keep that water out of people’s basements.

    Teachable Moment

    The field is made of plastic fibers and has a sand infill that keeps kids safe if they fall. Underneath the field are layers of stones of increasing sizes (as deep as 6-10 feet in some areas) and the water trickles through the “grass” and is held underground until it evaporates—so after a heavy rain, the field will be dry and ready for play. Not only that, it’s holding thousands of gallons of water that would otherwise go into the sewer system.

    Movement Moment

    The track and field will get a lot of use for recess, PE and on the weekends. Not only that, you can incorporate these spaces and physical activity into learning moments in the classroom. The  Space to Grow Teacher Toolkit  has some great lesson plans for this. For example, you can use walking on the track as an activity for the Calories In/Calories Out lesson plan (found on page 21), or you can have students record their steps from walking on the track to a virtual “destination” when using the Walking the Walk lesson plan (found on page 29).

    Trees + Shrubs

    You may notice many new trees and shrubs were planted around your schoolyard. These important natural elements provide a host of benefits, including habitat for birds, insects and animals; shade (as they grow larger); slowing down rain water with their canopy and absorbing the water in their roots; and physical, social and emotional health benefits just by being around them.

    Teachable Moment

    • Most tree roots grow in the top 6-24 inches of soil and the roots of a tree typically grow out beyond the farthest branches of the tree—that’s a long way! An average sized maple tree grows between 70 feet and 110 feet tall and can absorb 917 gallons of water per year. Work with your students to compare the height of the different trees in your schoolyard, and to estimate how many gallons of water your trees can hold per year! Here’s a great calculator tool that can help:  https://www.arborday.org/calculator . Notice that different trees have different leaves, too, and don’t forget that fallen tree leaves make for great artwork inspiration.

    Movement Moment

    Any time you can incorporate the natural elements of your schoolyard into learning and movement, you are supporting the physical and mental health of your students. This supports academics because we know that healthy students are better learners. Trees and shrubs need fresh mulch and water from time to time. Mulching and watering with your students is a great way to keep your kids moving and to incorporate nature!

    Play Equipment for Everyone

    Don’t forget to look for the green sign(s) in your schoolyard that says “Play Surface!”

    Your schoolyard includes play equipment for all ages and abilities. Students will enjoy the playground(s) before and after school as well as during recess. Since your schoolyard is open outside of school hours, your students are likely to play on the weekends, too. Be sure to establish etiquette guidelines with your students before taking them out for the first time, and repeat reminders throughout the school year.

    Play equipment is a fun and exciting way to keep your students moving, and is especially beneficial for unstructured play. The play equipment will challenge kids with beneficial risk and help improve motor skills and hand-eye coordination. 

    Teachable Moment

    The poured rubber play surface that is used for play structures is permeable, meaning rain water and melting snow will soak right through it. Not only is this surface safer for children when they fall, it soaks up lots of water and will be dry after it rains! How does that work? There are layers of stones of increasing sizes underneath the rubber surface that make up a storage area. When it rains, water fills up in the storage area like a bathtub and will stay there until the water evaporates or is slowly released into the sewer system after the rain event ends.

    Movement Moment

    Try the wait for the water workout! Test to see how long it takes for water to absorb into different surfaces of the schoolyard while keeping your students moving.

    1.    Pour a gallon of water on the play surface. Adjust the amount of water as needed—try 2 or 3 gallons and see the difference.

    2.    Have the students do 20 jumping jacks to see if the water has been absorbed.

    3.    If the water hasn’t been absorbed, you can switch to knee-highs or another exercise.

    4.    Try the activity on different surfaces throughout the schoolyard! The rain gardens, turf field and native gardens would be great for this as well.

      Schoolyard Etiquette

      Be sure to review the signs posted at your schoolyard entrances with your students at the start of each school year! Now that you’ve been acquainted with your new schoolyard, you can help your students and their families and neighbors use it safely all year long.

      Your school community worked together to establish the etiquette statements that welcome everyone to your new schoolyard. These are posted at each entrance to the schoolyard. Take some time at the start and end of each school year to read these with your classes and remind everyone to enjoy their time in the schoolyard and enjoy taking care of it, too!


      Space To Grow Partners

      Healthy Schools Campaign

      Managing Partner

      Openlands

      Managing Partner

      Chicago Public Schools

      Capital Funding Partner

      Chicago Department of Water Management

      Capital Funding Partner

      Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago

      Capital Funding Partner

      Whistler Elementary Space To Grow Site Plan Illustration