A six-week project for Silverwood Primary Class 6. Teacher’s guide, version 3.
Prepared by Michael Haupt. Version 1 was dated 8 October 2026 and version 2 was dated 19 October 2026. This version is dated 26 October 2026 and matches the rewritten student pages. Working document.
What changed in version 3. The project is simpler. The letters, the interviews, the choosing of a partner and the panel are gone. The children no longer contact any organisation. The work now ends in two things the class makes together: a Valley Map, made as one combined poster in class, and a short Valley Water Plan, a simple economic plan built around holding more water in the valley. Every child keeps their theme. Each child adds one layer to the map and writes one part of the plan. Do, Tell, Think, the Field Book and the threads all stay as they were.
Also added on 26 October. In Week 3 every child uses Google Earth to find a gully, or a flatter stretch of river damaged by an earlier flood, where they would build a leaky dam, and plans what they would build around it and what activities they would offer. Each child also picks one other way the valley could earn money. The leaky dam becomes the starting point of each child’s plan card (section 5).
1. The project at a glance
| Learners | The Class 6 students at Silverwood Primary, English-speaking. |
| Dates | 12 October to 20 November 2026. Six weeks. |
| Time | Four hours a week: about two hours on their own and two with the guide (Michael Haupt). The guided session is on the Friday, during Kinship, when the children are outdoors all day. |
| Method | Do, Tell, Think. A Field Book with one page a week. Three facts a week, each tied with a thread: blue, yellow or red. |
| Driving question | If our valley held more of the rain that falls on it, what work would that create, who would pay for it, and what must be true before we could start? |
| What the class makes | 1. The Valley Map: one combined poster, made in class, with a layer from every child. 2. The Valley Water Plan: one part from every child, each part on a single plan card. |
| The ending | At the end of the project the class shows the poster and tells the plan to their families and the school. Each child tells their own part. The date is still to be set. |
| What they already know | The TIME sequence and Commitment Pooling from Term 3. In main lesson they are studying Europe, with rivers as trade routes and mountains as barriers. |
The children may conclude that the valley’s water can earn its keep, or that it cannot yet. Either answer is fine if they can explain it.
2. Ground rules
- No outside contact. The children do not write to, call, interview or visit any organisation. They talk only with their own families and the adults at school. They may read the Forum’s Register and other public pages.
- Organisations appear only as possibilities. The plan may say an organisation could do a piece of work. It never says that an organisation has agreed, would agree, or has been asked. Any such line carries a red thread.
- The idea is not yet agreed in real life. The Ward 2 Development Forum has not discussed it. The map and the plan stay within the class and the families until the Forum has.
- Land. Nothing about who owns land, Farm 39, Langgezocht’s ownership or Madiba Park goes on the map or into the plan. The map marks places and water. It does not mark ownership. Zara brings any such finding to her teacher first.
- Honest claims. Every fact wears a thread. On the map, a solid line or mark means the class has a fact for it. A dotted line or mark means it is a guess.
- Outdoors. Silverwood’s outdoor rules apply at the river on Kinship days.
3. How the project works
Do, Tell, Think
- Do. Hands first: walking, pouring, building, measuring, painting and planting.
- Tell. You tell a story at Kinship. During the week each child tells their own work back to a grown-up in their own words.
- Think. Only then do the children sort what they found, choose threads and make up their minds.
The Field Book and the threads
Each child adds one page a week: a large drawing or painting of what they did, and three facts beside it, each tied with a thread.
| Thread | Words | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Blue [IC] | Checked twice | Two independent sources, or an official record such as a law or a stock exchange notice |
| Yellow [MS] | Their own word | It comes from the organisation or person the fact is about |
| Red [TBV] | Not yet checked | It seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it |
For every fact the children also ask: what would move it up one level?
The shape of a guided session (two hours)
| Minutes | Step | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | Arrive and move | A walk or a rhythm game at the nearest stream |
| 20 | Recall | Each child shows last week’s work and tells it in two minutes, without notes |
| 20 | Tell | You tell the story for the day. Name which parts are firm and which are hopes |
| 50 | Do | Work on the map or the plan |
| 20 | Think | Choose threads, and each child names one thing found and one open question |
4. The Valley Map
What it is. One combined poster on a large sheet of paper (A0, or a length of lining paper), made in class. It shows the valley from the mountains above Theewaterskloof Dam down the Riviersonderend past Genadendal and Greyton.
Before Week 3. Trace a light pencil outline from a printed map: the dam, the Riviersonderend, the Baviaans and Gobos rivers, the mountains, and the towns of Genadendal, Greyton and Riviersonderend. Leave the rest for the children.
Google Earth. The class map is at https://earth.google.com/earth/d/1PejJJkRHA_WrwYwdKrSeea92u3q3vp9y?usp=sharing. Each child sends you the numbers Google Earth shows for their leaky dam site. Pin each site in the shared project before Friday 6 November, so the class can see all of them together.
How it is built.
- Week 3, in class. Annabella leads the class in drawing the dam, the tunnel and the rivers on the traced outline. Each child points to where their layer belongs and says what they would put there.
- Weeks 3 to 5, on paper. The children paint the base together, then each child adds their own layer with the agreed symbol.
- Week 5. The class adds a key in one corner.
The layers.
| Child | Layer | Symbol |
|---|---|---|
| Annabella | The dam, the rivers, the tunnel west to Cape Town, and the river east to the sea at Witsand | Blue lines and arrows |
| Mikiya | Healthy land and damaged or invaded land, and the places where the class would hold more water | Green and brown wash; a ring for each place to restore |
| Zara | The old water places: the leiwater furrows, the springs, Langgezocht’s mountain catchment, the mission at Genadendal | A small drawn picture for each, with its year |
| Gracey | Where the work would happen and where people would learn it, such as the Genadendal nursery and the schools | A small hand |
| Ayden | Where the class would measure the water to prove it was there | A triangle |
| Evan | The money road: where money would come into the valley and where it would go. It runs along the edge of the map, flowing the opposite way to the water | Gold arrows |
| Sam | The organisations, each as a small flag in the colour of its TIME corner from the Four Corners game | Flags in four colours |
| Everyone | Their own leaky dam site | A short brown bar across the gully or river, with the child’s initial |
5. The Valley Water Plan
What it is. A short plan, one plan card per child, gathered into one booklet or pinned beside the map. It answers the driving question.
The plan card. Every child fills in the same card for their part. A drawing goes at the top.
| Line | What to write |
|---|---|
| 1. What we would do | One sentence |
| 2. Where | Point to it on the map |
| 3. Who could do it | People or organisations who could do it. Organisations carry a red thread |
| 4. What it gives the valley | Water, work, money, learning or care for the land |
| 5. What must be true first | The open questions for this part, each with a red thread |
Start from the leaky dam. Every child’s card begins with their own leaky dam: the site, what they would build around it and the activities they would offer. Each child then looks at it through their theme. The other ways to earn that the children pick (section 7) go into Evan’s Part 5, and each child also notes theirs on their own card under “What it gives the valley”.
The parts of the plan.
| Part | Told by | Question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Our valley’s water | Annabella | Where does the rain go, and who must say yes before anything changes? |
| 2. Holding more water | Mikiya | Where and how could the land hold more water? |
| 3. What the valley did before | Zara | What did the valley’s people do to look after water, and what could we learn from it? |
| 4. Who does the work | Gracey | What jobs would the plan make, and what would people need to learn? |
| 5. Where the money comes from | Evan | Who might pay for the water the valley holds, how much of the money would stay in the valley, and what other ways to earn did the class choose? |
| 6. How we would know | Ayden | How would anyone prove the extra water is really there? |
| 7. Who promises what | Sam | What could each party promise, what does each need, and which needs has nobody met? |
| 8. Before we start | Everyone, led by Sam | The red threads left over, gathered into one list |
Part 8 is the honest answer to “can the valley tap into the bond?” It names what must happen before the plan could go ahead.
Agreeing the plan (Week 5). Keep the Forum’s steps, in a short form:
- Each child reads their card aloud.
- Each child names the strongest point they heard from someone who sees it differently.
- The plan goes ahead when no child holds a reasoned objection. An objection names a reason and says what would settle it.
- If the class is still stuck, the class teacher chooses among the options already on the table.
6. The four weeks ahead
Weeks 1 and 2 are done. In Week 1 the class walked to the river, heard the raindrop story, played the Rope Web and Fact or Hope, and chose themes. In Week 2 they played the Four Corners and the Bean Bond.
The guided session is on Friday. The children’s own work follows in the days after it and comes back the next Friday.
| Week | Kinship Friday | Name | With the guide | On their own afterwards |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 30 October | Lay Out the Valley | Annabella leads the drawing of the dam and rivers on the poster. Mikiya’s tray demonstration. Paint the base of the poster | Their leaky dam on Google Earth. A hands-first task for their theme. A first plan card in pencil. Field Book page 3 |
| 4 | 6 November | Hold the Water | Leaky dam gallery on Google Earth. Each child adds their layer to the map. Each child tells their plan card. Sam runs a promise round for the plan | Final plan card. Field Book page 4 |
| 5 | 13 November | Make the Plan | Read the plan aloud and agree it. Gather Part 8. Finish the map and its key | Practise telling their part in two minutes. Field Book page 5 |
| 6 | To be set | Show the Valley | Show the map and tell the plan to families and the school | The last Field Book page: what we still don’t know |
This week (26 to 30 October). The Week 2 homework was a letter draft. That task is withdrawn. If a child has started a letter, it stays in their Field Book as a record of what they wanted to ask. In its place, each child sketches their map layer on a sheet of paper and brings it on Friday 30 October, with Field Book page 2.
Week 3: Lay Out the Valley (Friday 30 October)
- Recall: each child shows their map-layer sketch and Field Book page 2.
- Annabella leads the class in drawing the dam, the tunnel and the rivers on the poster outline. Each child points to where their layer goes.
- Mikiya runs the tray demonstration: one tray of packed bare soil, one of soil mixed with compost and leaf litter, the same water poured on both, and the runoff measured.
- Tell (section 7): “Who would be paid for holding water?”
- Paint the base of the Valley Map on the traced outline.
- Hand out blank plan cards (section 5).
- Introduce the leaky dam: build a small one from stones and cut branches across a channel dug in a sandpit or a bare patch of ground, pour water above it and watch it slow and spread. Then show the class map on Google Earth and how to read the numbers at the bottom of the screen.
Week 4: Hold the Water (Friday 6 November)
- Recall: each child shows their pencil plan card and the result of their hands-first task.
- Leaky dam gallery: open the class map with every child’s site pinned. Each child says in one minute why they chose the spot, what they would build and which activities they would offer. The others ask one question each. Add each site to the Valley Map as a brown bar.
- Each child paints their layer onto the map.
- The promise round. A shorter Rope Web: each child holds the card for their part of the plan and says “For this part, I promise … and I need …”. Sam asks the four questions of two or three promises (section 7) and writes every unmet need on the wall in red.
- Each child names one thing they would change on their card.
Week 5: Make the Plan (Friday 13 November)
- Recall: each child shows their final plan card.
- Read the plan aloud in order, Parts 1 to 7, and agree it (section 5).
- Sam gathers the red needs into Part 8, “Before we start”, with the whole class.
- Finish the map. Add the key. Check that every guess on the map is dotted.
- Decide the order of the showing. Each child chooses how to show their part: telling, a song, a short scene, or pointing to the map.
Week 6: Show the Valley (date to be set)
- One rehearsal in the morning.
- Show the map and tell the plan to families and the school. Each child takes about two minutes. Begin with the raindrop and end with Part 8.
- Close with the open questions. The children name each red thread left on the wall and say who could settle it one day.
- Look back: each child names one thing they now know that they did not know in October.
7. Briefing for the guide
Read this, then tell it in your own words. Where a fact comes from the BioConomy wiki and has not been checked against a second source, it carries [MS].
The sponge
Rain that falls on healthy land soaks in, is held in the soil, and comes out of springs and streams for weeks afterwards. Rain that falls on damaged land runs off within hours. Restoring land so it holds more water is called making a Water Retention Landscape (BioConomy wiki). Invasive trees such as pines and wattles use more water than the native plants they replace. One fynbos study found streamflow 55% lower 23 years after pine invasion. [MS] Clearing the trees puts water back into streams. [IC]
The valley’s water
- Theewaterskloof Dam holds up to 480 million cubic metres. Its water leaves west through a tunnel to Cape Town, and east down the Riviersonderend past Greyton and Genadendal to farms and towns, the Breede River and the sea at Witsand. [IC]
- The Baviaans River at Genadendal and the Gobos River at Greyton join the Riviersonderend below the dam. [IC]
- In the 2018 drought, farmers along the Riviersonderend received 60% of their allocation. [IC]
- The state holds all water in trust. The first share, the Reserve, is for people’s basic needs and for keeping rivers alive. [IC]
- The Moravian Church bought the mountain farm Langgezocht (about 1,881 hectares) in 1899 to protect Genadendal’s water sources. [MS] Greyton’s leiwater furrows have carried water from the Gobos River since 1854. [MS]
The bond
- The Cape Water Performance-Based Bond was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on 17 April 2026. It is a R2.5 billion bond issued by FirstRand Bank. Part of what it pays depends on checked results from clearing invasive plants in Cape Town’s catchments. [IC]
- Conservation Alpha checks the results. The Nature Conservancy South Africa does the restoration work through the Greater Cape Town Water Fund. [MS]
- Four tests of a bankable service (Forum page): a buyer who pays for the result; a result that can be measured; a clear right to do the work; a trusted body that signs the contracts and delivers.
- The honest question. The bond pays for work in Cape Town’s catchments. Valley water joins the river below the dam. It could count only if the dam’s operators agreed that more water arriving below the dam lets them release less. Nobody has asked. This becomes the first line of Part 8.
Two other funders, for Evan (discussed in class on 26 October)
The stamps for Evan’s page:
- Anton Rupert helped found the Southern African Nature Foundation in 1968, which became WWF South Africa. [IC]
- The Rupert family has funded nature conservation for many years. [IC]
- A Rupert family foundation could fund water retention in the valley. [TBV]
- The Western Cape Infrastructure Framework 2050 lists an “Overberg Dam” as a potential water security project in the Overberg District. [IC] (Western Cape Government)
- The dam could be built near Swellendam. [TBV] The Province’s page gives no site.
- The valley could offer to store extra water and draw on the Province’s water funding for the Overberg. [TBV]
- Nobody has asked the Rupert family or the Province. [TBV]
A story for Week 3: who would be paid for holding water?
- In Week 1 the drop of rain had two roads: the slow road through the soil, and the fast road over bare ground.
- Today we follow a second road, the road of money. Water runs down from the mountains to the sea. Money, if it comes, would travel the other way, from the people who need the water back up to the people who hold it.
- In Europe the class met rivers as trade roads, with fees paid at certain places. Ask: on our river, who would pay, and who would be paid?
- Holding water is work. Someone clears the thirsty trees, someone grows the young plants, someone measures the stream, and someone keeps the promises written down.
- Each of those is a job. The plan the class makes is a plan for that work and for the money that might pay for it.
- Close by asking: who in our valley already does some of this work, and who would want to?
Leaky dams and gully stuffing
A gully forms where runoff concentrates and cuts into a slope. A leaky dam is a low, permeable barrier of stone, logs or packed brush built across it. It slows the water, drops the soil the water carries, and lets the water soak in, while some flow still passes through. Gully stuffing packs brush, often cleared invasive branches, into the channel to the same end. Related small works are stone lines along the contour and planting on the banks. Together they are the hands-on side of a Water Retention Landscape. [MS]
The children may also choose a flatter stretch of river that an earlier flood has damaged. Floods strip the banks and leave rock scattered across the bed. A leaky dam wall built from that rock slows the river there and gives sediment a place to settle. On Google Earth these stretches show as torn or bare banks and pale patches of rock and gravel along the bed.
Check before any real build: work in a watercourse can count as a water use under the National Water Act and may need authorisation. [TBV] This applies with more force to a river site. Building a wall across a river and moving rock on its bed change how the river flows, and a river carries other people’s water downstream. This belongs in Part 8. The children plan on Google Earth only and build nothing at their sites, and no site is linked to an owner. Rivers are dangerous after rain: no child goes to a river site without an adult.
Other ways the valley could earn
Each child picks one of these for their card. All are untested here and carry 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, including leaky dam building days
- 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
Most of these need no buyer from outside the valley, so they could go ahead even if the bond never counts the valley’s water.
Commitment Pooling, for Sam’s promise round
A party can promise only what it controls. A need is a request. It becomes a promise only when another party accepts it. The four questions for any promise:
- Does it belong in the pool?
- What is it worth to the others?
- Can the party keep it without breaking another promise?
- Who receives it, and what do they give back?
TIME, for Sam’s flags
T (Tribes) organises through kinship and belonging. I (Institutions) organises through written rules and authority. M (Markets) organises through exchange at a price. E (Emergent) organises through sharing, commons and care for the land. Only organisations get flags. People and whole communities stay off the map. Use the placements the class agreed in the Four Corners game.
Rivers and mountains: the Europe thread
Each student page keeps its “Think of Europe” question. In Recall, ask one child to read theirs. Use what the class has learned in main lesson, and state nothing about Europe yourself.
8. What “completed” means
- The Valley Map has a layer from every child and a key.
- Every guess on the map is dotted.
- Every child’s leaky dam site is pinned on Google Earth and marked on the Valley Map.
- Every child has a finished plan card that starts from their leaky dam.
- Part 8, “Before we start”, lists every red need left on the wall.
- No line says an organisation has agreed or been asked.
- Every child tells or shows their part at the showing.
- Every child’s Field Book has a page for every week.
Appendix A: Materials
| Who | What is needed |
|---|---|
| Every child | A computer or tablet with a grown-up, for Google Earth |
| The class | Stones and cut branches for the leaky dam at Kinship. A large sheet of paper with the traced outline, paints, brushes, blank plan cards, blue, yellow and red wool cut into threads, a ball of wool for the promise round |
| Mikiya | Two trays, soil, compost or leaf litter, a jug, two cups |
| Annabella | Her sand model from Week 1, if it survived |
| Evan | Dried beans, paper |
| Ayden | A clear plastic bottle, a ruler, a marker, a stone |
| Zara | Her string timeline |
| Gracey | Her potted seedling, a notebook |
| Sam | Cards, a notebook, a marker in four colours |
Appendix B: Sources used in this guide
- Ward 2 Development Forum. From Water Access to Water Agency. Concept page, 28 September 2026. Not yet agreed.
- BioConomy wiki. Water Retention Landscapes.
- BioConomy wiki. Commitment Pooling.
- Ward 2 Development Forum. The Valley Through TIME.
- Ward 2 Development Forum. The Register.
- Forum research file, Deciding Without a Tie-Breaker (27 September 2026), for the steps used to agree the plan.