Ward 2 Development Forum

Gracey: The Work

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aliasesgracey

9 min read

This is your own page for the Water for the Valley project. Your tasks for every week to the end of the project are on this page.

You may use an AI helper. Copy and paste this link into the chat: https://df.valleyofgrace.co.za/cultural/education/project/llms.txt. It can check a fact or explain a hard word. Your Field Book, your map layer and your plan card are yours to make.

To see what the whole class is making, see Water for the Valley: Your Term 4 Project.

What changed on 26 October

We won’t be writing letters or holding a panel. If you started a letter, keep it in your Field Book. The class now makes two things together: a Valley Map, as one combined poster we work on in class, and a short Valley Water Plan. You keep your theme. You add one layer to the map and write one part of the plan.

Your question

What jobs would holding more water make, and what would people need to learn?

You are the class expert on the people who clear, plant and watch over the land. On the class poster you put a small hand wherever the work would happen and wherever people would learn it. In the plan you write Part 4: Who does the work.

Facts to stamp

Choose three of these for your Field Book. Tie the correct colour thread to each one.

  • [IC] - Blue

  • [MS] - Yellow

  • [TBV] - Red

  • Wild Restoration has a clearing team drawn from the local community. It also runs volunteer clearing days.

  • Wild Restoration watches the land with trail cameras and sound recordings.

  • The Zonderend Water Users Association clears river banks. It runs a nursery in Genadendal that grows palmiet and other local plants.

  • A team of 14 people, employed through the Expanded Public Works Programme, runs the nursery.

  • The Forum has an idea for a water skills course at the Valley of Grace Learning Campus. It has not been agreed.

Words to use:

  • restoration (helping damaged land recover),
  • nursery (a place where young plants are grown),
  • monitoring (watching and recording what changes over time),
  • volunteer (someone who helps without being paid).

Think of Europe

Someone had to keep Europe’s river banks, canals and roads in good order. Who did the keeping, and who paid for it? Now think about our valley. Who keeps our rivers and mountains in good order? Bring your answer from main lesson.

Your leaky dam

Everyone in the class does this in Week 3.

A gully is a deep channel that rushing rainwater has cut into a slope. A leaky dam is a low wall of stones, logs or packed branches built across a gully. When rain rushes down, the wall slows the water so it spreads out and soaks into the soil. Some water still leaks through, so the stream below keeps running. Gully stuffing means packing branches and brush into a gully so it catches soil and water. Branches cleared from pines and wattles can be used. Other small helpers are lines of stones laid across a slope, and plants along the banks to hold the soil.

You can also choose a flatter stretch of a river that a flood has damaged before. Floods tear up the banks and leave rocks scattered along the riverbed. Those rocks can be used to build the leaky dam wall, so the river slows down and spreads out there.

Find your site on Google Earth (25 minutes). With a grown-up, open the class map: https://earth.google.com/earth/d/1PejJJkRHA_WrwYwdKrSeea92u3q3vp9y?usp=sharing

  1. Look at the slopes and rivers around Genadendal and Greyton. Zoom in until you can see single trees.
  2. Find a gully, or a flood-damaged stretch of river. Gully clues: a dark or bare line running down a slope, a strip of green along it, or a fan of bare soil at the bottom where the water dropped what it carried. River clues: a flatter part of the river where the banks look torn or bare, and pale patches of rock and gravel spread along the riverbed.
  3. Choose the spot where you would build your leaky dam.
  4. Take a screenshot with your spot circled, or draw what you see. Hold your pointer on the spot and write down the numbers Google Earth shows at the bottom of the screen. Michael will use them to pin your site on the class map.

Plan around it (20 minutes). On one page, write or draw:

  • why you chose this spot,
  • what you would build around it, such as a path for visitors, a bench or lookout, a sign that explains how it works, a measuring post, or a nursery bed or vegetable garden below where the soil stays damp,
  • what activities you would offer, such as guided walks, building days where visitors help stuff a gully, school field trips, birdwatching, or workshops that teach people to build leaky dams,
  • your own theme question: Who would build your leaky dam and run the activities? What would they need to learn?
  • one more way the valley could earn money, chosen from the list below.

Other ways the valley could earn. Each of these is an idea nobody has tested here, so give it a red thread.

  • Growing vegetables for restaurants and guesthouses in Greyton
  • A nursery selling young local plants for gardens and restoration work
  • Selling firewood, poles and wood chips from cleared pines and wattles
  • Making compost from cleared brush and garden waste
  • Honey from bees kept near the fynbos
  • Guided walks and hikes along restored streams
  • Teaching days for schools and visitors
  • A farm stall or Saturday market for valley produce
  • Collecting seed from local plants for restoration projects
  • Furniture and crafts made from cleared wood
  • Paid work measuring rain and streams

Look on Google Earth only. Don’t build anything there just yet. Rivers are dangerous after rain, so never go to one without a grown-up. Many slopes belong to someone, so don’t write who owns the land.

This week: before the next session

About an hour and a half. This replaces the letter.

Do

  1. Sketch your layer (40 minutes). On a rough drawing of the valley, mark where the work might happen: the mountains for clearing, the river banks, the nursery at Genadendal, and the schools where people could learn. Draw a small hand for each. Use dotted lines for guesses.
  2. Check your working day (10 minutes). Look at the four pictures you drew in Week 1 of a worker’s day. Ask a grown-up which picture they think is most right, and why.
  3. Field Book page 2 (30 minutes). Draw something from the Four Corners game or the Bean Bond. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 3: Lay Out the Valley

A little over two hours. The leaky dam takes the extra time.

Do

  1. Your leaky dam (45 minutes). Follow the steps in “Your leaky dam” above.
  2. Grow and record (20 minutes). Look at the seedling you planted in Week 1. Measure it, draw it, and write how often you watered it. What does a young plant need to grow? A nursery does this for thousands of plants.
  3. The job list (35 minutes). List the jobs the plan would need. Some ideas: clearing invasive trees, growing young plants, planting them, measuring water, keeping records, guiding visitors. For each job, write one thing a person would need to learn. Then ask a grown-up what they had to learn for their own work, and write it down with a yellow thread.

Tell

  1. Tell it back (10 minutes). Tell a grown-up which job on your list you would most like to try, and what you would need to learn first. Then show them your leaky dam site and the activities you would offer.

Think

  1. Your plan card in pencil (20 minutes). Fill in your plan card for your part. Start from your leaky dam: what you would build and the activities go under “What we would do” and “What it gives the valley”. For “What it gives the valley”, count how many different jobs your list makes. Leave pay to Evan’s part.

Your plan card has five lines, with a drawing at the top:

  1. What we would do (one sentence)

  2. Where (point to it on the map)

  3. Who could do it (organisations get a red thread)

  4. What it gives the valley (water, work, money, learning or care for the land)

  5. What must be true first (your open questions, each with a red thread)

  6. Field Book page 3 (10 minutes). Stick in your leaky dam screenshot or drawing. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 4: Hold the Water

About two hours.

Do

  1. Your final plan card (50 minutes). Copy your plan card out in your best writing. Change anything the class or Sam’s promise round showed you. Paint or draw the picture at the top.

Tell

  1. Tell it back (15 minutes). Read your card to a grown-up. Ask them which line is least clear, and fix it.

Think

  1. Field Book page 4 (40 minutes). Draw your seedling now, and the job you would most like to try. Add three facts, each with a thread.
  2. Think of Europe (15 minutes). Read your Europe answer again. Add one sentence about what it tells you about your part of the plan.

Week 5: Make the Plan

About two hours.

Do

  1. Practise your part (60 minutes). You have about two minutes at the showing. Bring your seedling and your job list, and point to your hands on the map. Practise it aloud at least four times, without notes on the last two.

Tell

  1. Tell it to your family (20 minutes). Show them your part as you will on the day. Ask them one thing they didn’t understand.

Think

  1. Field Book page 5 (40 minutes). Draw the whole Valley Map from memory, as best you can, and mark your own layer. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 6: The showing

Your last Field Book page (30 minutes), after the showing. Draw the thing from this project you will remember longest. Under it, write the open questions from your part that nobody has answered yet. These are what we still don’t know.

Remember

  • You don’t need to contact any organisation. Talk with your family and the adults at school.
  • Write “could”, never “will”, about an organisation. Nobody has agreed to anything.
  • This idea has not been discussed by the Forum yet. Keep what you find with your class and family.

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