“Gardening in the Living Room”, Connected, level 2, January 2018
10 January 2018
In this article Balaclava School has a new greenhouse called the Living Room. The students find out how the environment inside the Living Room helps plants grow during the cold Dunedin winters and investigate which vegetables grow best inside and outside its unique climate.
You can the article and the teaching notes here: “Gardening in the Living Room” Connected, level 2, January 2018
Other useful resources
Tech systems for year 3–4 students: Hydroponics
Teacher, Andrea Robertson, used hydroponics as one of the contexts for building students' understanding of technological systems.
Using work in our community to learn about technology
This video is about the students at South Otago technology centre who learnt about a green wall in their new plaza that was a technological system.
The Green Wall – Educational Vertical Garden Bottle System Project
These students grew a green wall using recycled plastic drink bottles.
Discussion questions
These could include:
- What is the input and the output of the living room?
- What change has occurred to the plants in these technological systems (the living room, the green walls) to create the outputs?
- What are the components of each of these technological systems? Identify the role of each component in the technological systems in transforming the input to the output.
Indicators of progression for discussion starters
| Component | Indicator | Level |
| Technological systems |
| 2 |