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Lights, Camera, ACTION!

Great news! Thanks to a group of very talented final year film students from the University of Northampton you can hear the story behind the creation of the world’s only underground club for kids – Secret Seed Society.

Behind the scenes Secret Seed Society HQ

Stumbling Goat Productions went behind the scenes of Secret Seed Publications to see a Social Enterprise in action.  With the help of Bright Horizons Nursery and Caroline Chisholm School, they were also able to follow the team spread their love for vegetables through gardening projects and their interactive theatre production ‘What’s the Big Secret?’.  We all had lots of fun filming together, especially the children who became film stars for the day!

1. National Framework for Sustainable Schools

The government would like all schools to be sustainable by 2020, and has produced guidance within an eight-doorway framework. SSS adheres to two of these doorways in particular; food and drink, and purchasing and waste. Schools can be sustainable through being model suppliers of healthy, sustainable food and drink; showing strong commitments to the environment; and maximising their use of local suppliers. SSS achieves this through increasing children’s awareness of where food comes from, food chains, and the processes used in growing, harvesting and food preparation.

SSS connects to the purchasing and waste doorway by carefully sourcing goods and services of high environmental and ethical standards that have been obtained from local sources where practicable. All of SSS’s materials for each book and accompanying pack compliment these principles.

2. Healthy Schools

In ten years the National Healthy Schools programme has become one of the country’s most widely embraced initiatives in schools. Schools need to satisfy criteria in the four core themes within the programme: Healthy eating, physical activity, PSHE, and emotional health and well-being.

SSS promotes inclusion through bringing together cross-curricular learning through an interactive approach. Children initially engage in a written and visual text, and have close links to ICT through the website extras. Connecting the imaginative seed-based characters with further learning opportunities brings an extra ‘real and meaningful’ experience to learning, and allows for children’s individual learning styles.
Activities such as growing seeds, or making recipes supports all areas of Healthy Schools and promotes positive emotional health and wellbeing so children can understand and express their feelings, build their confidence and emotional resilience, and therefore their capacity to learn.

3. Every Child Matters Agenda

Every Child Matters: Change for Children is a comprehensive approach to the well-being of children and young people from birth to age 19. The five outcomes for children and young people are: Be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve through learning, make a positive contribution to society, and achieve economic well-being.

SSS encourages children to work together in more integrated and effective ways through growing, harvesting and cookery based activities that link with the central imaginative narratives of the stories. Children are learning and reflecting on their environment through a variety of creative and exciting cross-curricular links, and our fulfilling of outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda.

4. Growing Schools Initiative

Growing schools promotes learning outside the classroom and has been founded in response to the government’s needs for children to have the chance to learn in new, more relevant and exciting ways. By having direct experiences of growing within the natural environment, this has been shown to be particularly effective in benefiting those who find classroom learning difficult.

SSS connects directly with this principle through developing children’s understanding of where food comes from and the role of farmers and growers, the interdependence of the urban and rural environments, and how and why we should care for the natural world.

5. Learning outside the classroom

Learning

Mark Ridsdill Smith is also called the Vertical Gardener (not because he is very tall but because he is an expert in gardening in a small space which means growing vertically). Here are his tips to help you win the Giant Bean Competition.

Mark's runner bean flowers need the bees to form beans

1. Runners grow best with lots of water – so use a large pot (easier to keep well watered) or a container with a water reservoir (like an Earthbox)

2. They need pollinating by bees – so it can be fun and beneficial to grow some insect attracting flowers nearby.

Are your beans buzzing with bees?

3. Slugs love runner bean seedlings. You can protect with small home made cloches – cut empty drink bottles in half and put one over each seedling.

4. You can buy runners with both orange or white flowers. Mixing the two can look really pretty.

5. Runners need a good tall support to climb up – like a wigwam. If you can find tall branches, they can look much prettier than canes.

6. When the runners reach the top of the canes, pinch out the tops (this means cutting the very tip off). This will encourage the plant to send out more shoots – and beans – below.

7. Pick, pick, pick. It’s very important to keep picking running beans – as this encourages the plant to grow more. Pick the beans small for a delicious, tender treat (big beans look cool but can be rather tough to eat).

8. To boost your crop, feed with liquid tomato food once every two or three weeks after the plant starts flowering.

Mark tends his runner beans

What we see, hear, taste, touch, smell and do gives us six main ‘pathways to learning’. Young people are intensely curious and should be given the opportunity to use all of their senses to explore the world around them.

The potential for learning is maximised if we use the powerful combination of visual, audio and kinaesthetic (doing) ways of learning as well as providing children with the freedom to be creative and informally learn through play. The value of learning outside  the classroom is now forming part of many new educational initiatives, and the ethos of SSS’s work is to compliment and facilitate this. We can help you with our interactive theatre show, workshops and lesson ideas

The educational value of SSS means that it is addressing statutory curricular requirements within a cross-curricular and creative way.

• Literacy: Each story is designed to challenge and stimulate readers in early KS2. Imaginatively animated pictures alongside the text also allow younger children (KS1) to enjoy following and responding to the stories. Grammatical structure and use of developing techniques such as alliteration and metaphor provide extensions for engagement with the text.

• Science & Technology: The illustrations are designed to familiarise children with the name of a wide range of vegetables. The context for the stories relate to understanding the purpose, value and nature of plants, food and growing. Children learn how to grow their own seeds, and to understand what is needed to turn a seed into food. Linked to each seed type are accompanying recipes which connect plants with our diet, and allow children to explore the sensory qualities of materials, and healthy eating.

- SSS’s website is filled with interactive links so children can share experiences of growing seeds and making recipes. With links to facebook, twitter and a SSS blog site, children can share their experiences of reading, growing and cookery within a safe and secure environment.

• Art and Design: The books and website feature original artwork where characters and settings are created using an imaginative combination of collage and photography to create a visual storyboard which follows alongside the text. The images themselves introduce children to mixed-media art and design which lend to creative follow-up projects. Also featured on the website is a short animation film which could be transferred to school projects.

• Personal development: Children need to understand more about the world in which they live, and how they interact with the natural environment and its resources. Children build creative and independence skills through direct experiences of growing seeds and cooking, allowing them to become better problem-solvers, increasing confidence and self-esteem.

• Sustainable development: The need for our future generation to be aware of the need for sustainability is a priority in learning for life. SSS holds this principle at heart with all products used in producing the book and accompanying resources being sourced from sustainable plant materials. Children gain an insight into recycling, and alternative ways in which to produce materials without being harmful to the environment and to limit waste.

• Other curricular areas: Geography (interacting with the environment); and Citizenship, the books are designed to promote togetherness, reading together, planting together, cooking together and eating together a complete journey.