Sweet Potato Project Concludes

Over the course of this school year, fourth and fifth graders at Guan Ai learned all about sweet potatoes. Past lessons in this year-long unit included explorations into the history and culture of the sweet potato and how it is eaten and used in the village: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]. Principal Sun of RCEF partner Guan Ai Primary School  was a lead teacher on this project and describes the last steps of the project which took place in May and June.  To see a video, click here.

After designing and building a brick planter covered with a plastic sheet for incubating the seedlings, pairs of students took turns monitoring the seedlings. They recorded the date, temperature, and growth conditions in a chart. At first, the temperature in the incubator was relatively high (around 28 degrees Celsius) but there was a period following of about ten days in which the temperature was low (around 18 degrees Celsius). The students were worried that this would cause the seedlings not to sprout but after half a month, they finally came up.

Since sweet potatoes are not a major cash crop in Houjia Village, most people don’t pay much attention to the details of their cultivation. We wanted the students to learn more technical knowledge and practice finding information from outside materials. I went online to look for relevant text and gave copies to the students to read. However, they couldn’t understand the content so the teachers went back and extracted the highlights from the articles, turned them into language that the children could understand, and let the students read again.

I realized that covering the top of the incubator with soil wasn’t the best method because once water got on it, the top layer became very hard and this could affect the growth of the seedlings. It would have been better to use crop residue and straw as a covering. After the seedlings started to come out, we had to cut little openings in the plastic covering to let air come in. We watered them every day and they grew well.

Once the seedlings grew to around twenty five centimeters tall, we transplanted them to the fields. On May 12, we first taught the students the basics of planting. There were two options: planting the seedlings straight into the ground or building up furrows and planting the seedlings on the raised beds. We chose the latter because it would produce a greater harvest. After that, the students practiced pulling up the seedlings and trimming the roots. The students then split into groups and each individual was responsible for either digging a hole, planting, watering, or filling up the hole. When all was ready, we lined up as a big group and marched excitedly out to the fields. As the planting took place, each group was supervised by a teacher who provided on-site guidance. The students had a great time.

In the evenings, students also worked in small groups to select and cook various sweet potato recipes. The teachers found a lot of recipes and students could also come up with their own. We helped the students go online to search for different ways of cooking sweet potatoes and then each group took turns making a recipe. In all, the groups made over ten dishes, including candied sweet potatoes, banana-sweet potato pancakes, and sweet potato sausage. The students experienced the joy of cooking and greatly enjoyed eating the delicious food. Afterwards, they organized their recipes into a cookbook.