Findel-CASTME Commonwealth Education Award 2024 has been won by the Som Gurukul of Kurukshetra in Haryana, India, for their syndicate entry “Creating and Linking Forest Garden to Environmental Science Curriculum at Middle School Level: Heightening Awareness to Climate Change and Sustainable Development” submitted by the project team consisting of Subhash Chauhan, Praveen Saini and Dr Lalit Kishore who coordinated the project
The abstract of the top award is as follows
Inspired by visiting friends connected with agricultural science and technology and a teacher-educator who had organised two teacher training workshops in school, a six-week environmental studies (EVS) complementary course in ‘Forest Gardening’ was developed and implemented with the built-in concepts of sustainability, food security through forest food, and environmental conservation. The recently released curriculum framework under the National Education Policy-2020 in India in tune with UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda, also urges that educational institutions must engage learners in a wide-ranging activities and materials and inspire them to become informed and active global citizens with deep awareness of sustainable development and conservation of environment. The school took the initiative and created an EVS-integrated modular course in which four topics were taught in grade six with a forest garden worked as a lab and adjoining room worked as workshop with four gardening implements, grinding-and-grating kitchen ware to create chutneys as forest food, Three practical and workshop practice integrated STEM areas and topics incorporated the role of forest-foods in sustainability. The innovation was documented and favourable reactions towards both by boys and girls and it has prompted the extension to grades seven and eight’.
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