Growing young minds

Students in New Zealand secondary schools will benefit from a new board game developed to help build knowledge and understanding of food production.

The new ‘Grow’ board game was officially launched at the Fieldays Opportunity Grows Here Careers Hub and was expected to be available in schools in April. However, delays in production meant it was late arriving and wasn’t available until Term 4.

Grow was developed as part of a joint initiative between Rabobank, Te Whare Wānaka o Aoraki Lincoln University and the Agribusiness in Schools Programme. The game was created to support learning by year 11 students studying National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) Agribusiness.

It touches on all the major topics included within the agribusiness curriculum and provides students with a fun way to acquire and reinforce the course content.

Rabobank New Zealand CEO Todd Charteris said the idea for the new game came about following discussions between Rabobank’s Upper South Island Client Council – a group of the bank’s clients from the upper half of the South Island who meet regularly to discuss the challenges facing the agri sector – and Lincoln University.

“Our Client Councils have identified long-term industry capacity as one of the key challenges facing the agricultural sector and, over recent years, our Upper South Island Council has worked closely alongside Lincoln University to develop initiatives to highlight to school students the range of career opportunities within the sector,” he said.

“One of the topics that has regularly come up in conversations between our Council and Lincoln University is the need for more resources to support learning about food production at the secondary school level and, as a result, it was decided the two parties would collaborate to develop a new board game which would help shine a light on the wide array of knowledge and skills required to run a successful farming operation.”

Charteris said both parties felt it was essential to align the content of the game with the NCEA curriculum, so they reached out to Kerry Allen and Melanie Simmons from the Agribusiness in Schools Programme to help with the design process.

“After more than 18 months of development, the game is now ready to go, and I’m confident it will prove a hit with students and really help increase understanding of food production as well as encouraging more young people to consider a career in the primary industries,” he said.

“Initially, the game will only be made available to schools who are part of the Agribusiness in Schools programme but, if there is enough interest, there is also scope to make the game available to all secondary schools across New Zealand.”

Lincoln University Student Engagement Manager, Jaime Shone said the game focuses on the financial, social, and environmental aspects of food production and also incorporates elements of Mātauranga Māori.

“Up to six players can participate in the game, with all players initially allocated a piece of land and a sum of money before choosing if they wish to operate a dairy, sheep and beef, horticulture, viticulture or arable farming operation,” she said.

“Gameplay consists of players moving around a board and accumulating money, which then gives them an opportunity to purchase the required assets to operate their farm. Players must first successfully answer a question to collect an asset, and the first player to collect all the assets required for their farm wins the game.”

Shone said game questions relate to a massive array of topics including, but not limited to, biosecurity, soil composition, waterways, key agri terms, biodiversity, biological processes, animal behaviours, weather patterns and agricultural production by region.

“In addition to covering all key aspects of the agribusiness programme, game questions also have significant cross-over with the content of the NCEA geography and science curriculums,” she said.

“And we expect the game will also get plenty of use from students studying these topics.”

Agricultural & Horticultural Science teacher Anthea Garmey from Motueka High School – one of the more than 125 secondary schools that received the games – said she’d utilised Grow throughout term four with her year 11 and 12 students.

“It’s a fantastic game and the students engaged with it straight away,” she said.

“Since the games arrived, I’ve often had students come into class and ask if they can play the game, and then they will quite happily play it for the whole period.

“Everyone really loves it and has learnt lots from playing the game. And the real bonus is that the content is all very relevant for their assessment.”

Garmey said game questions had prompted some excellent discussions among her Agricultural & Horticultural Science students.

“There’s a lot of variety in the questions. Some of them are quite challenging and this has led to some really good discussions among the students about potential answers.”

Agricultural Science teacher Anita Taylor from Paraparaumu College – another of the high schools to receive sets of Grow – said students in her Agricultural Science class had also really enjoyed the new game.

“I used the game with my year 11 students as revision before their Agriculture exam, and it worked really well,” she said.

“The students found the questions quite challenging, but even the students who don’t often speak up in class seemed engaged and very interested in hearing the answers to the questions.”

Ms Taylor said she’d also been using Grow with some of her year 10 students to give them a taste of the Agricultural Science curriculum.