Cross-curricular learning with the Royal Horticultural Society

IOE partners with the RHS’s Campaign for School Gardening to demonstrate how school-based gardening can be used to engage and inspire young learners. New teachers are supported to explore how to creatively embed growing and gardening in their teaching of subjects across the primary curriculum.

Gardening promotes sustainability awareness, linking language learning to global citizenship and environmental responsibility.

Zeinab El-Khateeb, IOE Lead of the Primary PGCE Languages specialism, shares how a workshop in March 2026 integrated languages, outdoor learning, and sustainability through gardening activities, can support children’s language development in meaningful and engaging ways. The workshop took place at Christ Church Primary School in Chelsea, London.

Zeinab said: “This initiative provided a valuable opportunity to explore how cross-curricular approaches can enhance both language learning and environmental awareness, whilst also contributing to the development of global citizenship through language education, promoting intercultural understanding and responsibility in an interconnected world. This aligns with the National Curriculum for Languages, which emphasises the value of cultural understanding as “a liberation from insularity” and highlights that language learning “provides an opening to other cultures” (Department for Education, 2013). 

“These workshops have a significant impact on both PGCE student teachers and pupils:

• Pupils demonstrated high levels of enthusiasm and confidence in using the target language, supported by hands-on gardening activities.
• For PGCE students, the experience enhanced their confidence in delivering cross-curricular lessons and highlighted the value of integrating languages with real-world contexts.

“As a teacher educator, I worked with our school and RHS partners to model effective pedagogical approaches for PGCE students, supporting them in delivering multilingual learning in French, Spanish and Mandarin. Strategies such as repetition, visual scaffolding and Total Physical Response (TPR) were used to enhance engagement and accessibility. The use of repetition and storytelling enabled pupils to recall and sequence the days of the week effectively, whilst also applying vocabulary in meaningful contexts. The outdoor and experiential nature of the activity contributed to reducing language anxiety, supporting Krashen’s (1982) Affective Filter Hypothesis.”