Garden Tower: Measurement & Data Collection

Lyndsey Wells

A Project-Based Learning Resource for K-5 (+) Educators: An Invitation to Change How We Teach About Growth, Systems, and Sustainability 

Below you will find the written component to the full project. For the full project slides, scroll to the Resource section at the bottom of this document.

🔁This content is yours to use. Download it, remix it, adapt it, share it—make it work for your community.
After reading the lesson plan, please refer to the bottom of the lesson plan for self-reflection questions to assist with your next steps!

About This Resource

• What you see here is a living documentation of a project in progress. Pictured are photographs of actual plants growing over time, measurement data from real students, real inquiry questions, and real learning moments.
• The main goal is to show you how measurement and data collection become alive when students are watching something grow that they planted and tended. When the stakes are personal, the mathematics and science transform from abstract to essential.
• This is an invitation to shift from teaching about measurement to teaching through measurements—using plants, towers, and systems as the vehicle for rigorous mathematical and scientific thinking
• * The resource demonstrates a transferable learning structure that works across disciplines and contexts. The pattern (start with something observable, collect data, visualize patterns, map relationships, and scale up to global systems) is a framework you can apply to any subject, any grade level, any real-world problem your students care about  

How to Use This Resource: Two Pathways

This resource serves two distinct audiences with different entry points and purposes:

For Students: Documentation & Discovery

• Students use this resource to engage in planting, growing, measuring, and observing; they collect data, create visualizations, and discover interconnectedness through concept mapping. For students, this is a journey from observation → data → patterns → relationships→ global significance 

For Educators: Planning & Facilitation

• Teachers use this resource as a curriculum framework and planning tool. During your lesson or unit design (and especially if you are familiar with concept mapping and the UN Sustainable Development Goals), this resources shows you: 
  • Starting points: What observable thing will anchor your project?
  • Learning pathways: How to guide students through the five-step structure (observe, gather, visualize, map, scale)
  • Integration points: Where to connect local hands-on work to global systems thinking (SDGs)
  • Reinforcement opportunities: How concept mapping helps students (and you) see what they’ve learned and make connections across disciplines

The Dual Purpose of Concept Mapping

• For teachers: A planning and assessment tool to clarify learning objectives and see where concepts connect (especially useful when aligning to SDGs)
• For students: A way to make visible the interconnectedness of what they’ve learned, showing cause-and-effect relationships within the systems they study.

The Heart of This Work: Why Gardens? Why Data?

• Too often, students encounter measurement in isolation: rulers on worksheets, numbers in textbooks, data that arrives already formatted and ready for analysis. But measurement in the real world is born from a question that matters. 
• A student wants to know: How tall did my plant grow this week? That question drives them to find the ruler, to think carefully about where to start counting, and to notice whether ⅛ or ¼ inch matters. The measurement has purpose.
• Real data collection is the same. Scientists, farmers, gardeners, and engineers all collect data because they need to understand something or make a decision. In this project, your students become that observer. They are not reading about plant growth in a textbook; they are documenting it themselves, turning observation into numbers, and then figuring out what those numbers mean.
• This work also plants seeds—literally and figuratively—for bigger sustainability thinking. When students track a plant over seven weeks, they are engaging with real food systems, real resource management, and real environmental thinking. They are beginning to see how their hands-on actions connect to larger global goals around food security, health, and responsible resource use.

Getting Started: The Garden Tower

This resource is built around the ZipGrow Garden Tower, a vertical growing system designed for education and home use. If you’d like to replicate this exact lesson with the same structure and scale, you can purchase Garden Towers at https://zipgrow.com/. However, this learning structure works with any growing system: traditional gardens, windowsill pots, etc.

What Is Being Taught Here?

1. Measurement as a Tool for Answering Real Questions

• The ruler is a tool for investigation. When they measure their seedlings on Day 3 and again on Day 8 (see slide 8), they are asking: “What changed? By how much?” This is the essence of scientific thinking.
• The fractions on a ruler stop being abstract symbols and become necessary precision. If a plant grew 1 ⅜ inches instead of just “about 1 inch,” that difference matters. It tells us something about that particular plant’s vigor or the conditions it experienced.

2. Data as a Story

• Raw numbers become a narrative when plotted on a graph. The line going up tells us the story of growth, and can help us detect patterns. A steep line says: This plant was hungry for growth. A gentler curve says: This plant took its time. Students begin to read data not as isolated facts but as evidence of a process unfolding over time.
• When students track multiple plants, they discover variation. The variation opens up conversations about what factors affect growth (light, water, soil, temperature) and how we might investigate those differences.

3. Systems Thinking Emerges from Hands-on Care

• The Garden Tower is a system: water flows down, nutrients reach roots, and plants grow upward. 
• The concept mapping work (connecting the Garden Tower to the UN Sustainable Development Goals) helps students zoom out. They start with their immediate tower—a tangible thing they can touch and measure—and connect it to global systems. On slide 18, you can see food security (Target 2.1), health (Target 3.4), water and land (Targets 6 and 15). This movement from local to global is how systems thinking develops.

4. Student Agency

• Critically, this is a student-led documentation. Students make decisions, collect evidence, and draw conclusions. This signals to students: You are capable of investigating the world and understanding what you find!

The Transferable Learning Structure: Beyond Gardens

The Garden Tower provides a really powerful example of a five-step learning structure that transfers across any discipline, any topic, and any real-world system:

Step 1: Start with Something Real and Observable 

• Find something authentic and relatable. Something students can see, touch, and interact with. In this resource, it’s a growing plant: But it could be:
  • A local environmental system (creek, park, schoolyard)
  • A social system (school lunch program)
  • A text or story with characters and relationships
  • Historical events and their causes
  • Real-world data (weather, traffic, food waste)

Step 2: Gather Data—Numbers, Observations, Patterns, Experiences

• Numbers or facts they measure or count
• Observations they document (sketches, photos, descriptions, videos)
• Patterns they notice (What changed?)
• Experiences they reflect on (What surprised you? What questions do you have?* This is where measurement and data literacy come alive!

Step 3: Visualize It—Charts, Graphs, Drawings, Timelines

• Visualization brings raw data to life. When you plot plant heights on a graph, you see the growth story. When you create a timeline of events, you understand sequence. When you draw a food system, you perceive relationships.
• Visual thinking prepares students for conceptual mapping

Step 4: Concept Map It (Relationships, Cause-and Effect, Systems Interactions)

• In the Garden Tower project, students (and/or teachers) map how the tower connects to food security, health, sustainability, and global goals. But concept mapping works for any system:
  • In science: How do sun, water, plant, and animal interact in an ecosystem?
  • In math: How do variables, numbers, and patterns relate to real-world inequities? 
  • In ELA: How do character choices lead to consequences? How do themes connect across contexts?
  • In social studies: How do historical causes lead to events that shape the present? 
• The crucial move: Students move from parts to interactions. 

Step 5: Scale Up (Connect to Larger Systems, Global Issues, or Standards)

• A student’s Garden Tower connects to UN Sustainable Development Goals around food, security, health, and environmental protection. A student’s data on school lunch waste connects to conversations about consumption, sustainability, and policy. A student’s analysis of a character’s choices connects to larger questions about power, agency, and justice. 

Educators: Feel free to change subject matter, time scale, scope, and final product.

SELF-REFLECTION: INVITATION FOR EDUCATORS:

1) Grounding your practice in experience

• In what ways do your current lessons invite students to make or grow something rather than just analyze or describe it?
• How might you rethink “data” as something students can touch, see, or create rather than only read about?

2) Making thinking visible and memorable 

• What tools do your students currently use to show their thought processes? How might concept mapping (on paper or digitally) make those connections more visible or transferable?
• How could you help students trace the cause-and-effect relationships within a system they study? [The key here is to move from parts→ interactions]

3) Encouraging Student Agency

• What routines help students notice growth of their projects, skills, or ideas over time?
• How could you build in student-led sharing moments (mini-presentations, photo logs, or quick mapping updates) that make progress visible and valued? 
• How might students collect stories, data, or images from their neighborhood or school grounds to connect local details to larger concepts?

4) Connecting to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• Which SDG feels most connected to your subject area or community? How might you frame one upcoming lesson around that global goal?
• How could a local, hands-on project help students see their role within global systems of food, health, or sustainability?

5) Shifting Educator Perspective

• How might moving from “teaching about” to “teaching through” a system change your role as a facilitator?
• What new habits could you model, like curiosity, observation, and documentation, that invite students to act as both scientists and storytellers?