All-day school meets sustainability: The sustainable garden alphabet

The transfer of teaching and learning processes in the schoolyard, yields an enrichment of the curriculum and a divergence from conventional teaching practices. The school garden can constitute a physical, social and learning context that will provide the opportunity to students to develop their social skills and will approach the cognitive subjects of the curriculum in an active and participative way. The present work is an educational action research in which first grade students, who attended the full day school, participated. Its purpose was to investigate the effect of active students’ participation in shaping and utilizing the school garden as a means of developing collaborative skills, measuring their attitude towards the full day school program, enhancing language teaching and developing environmental awareness. The results demonstrated the development of cooperation between students, the strengthening of the language course, a positive attitude towards the full day program and the development of environmental awareness of pupils.