Yesterday morning Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA) students faced into an agriculture/ horticulture paper, which was later described as both good and relevant by Mr Eamon Chesser, who teaches at St Patrick's Comprehensive School, Shannon, Co Clare.
"It was generally a fair test of students' knowledge," he commented. The 90-minute paper included a range of well thought-out questions pitched at the right level, he said. Section 1 offered questions based on a visit to an industry or business, with question 1(d) asking students to list four questions they or their class had asked their hosts or visitors. Some students, however, may have had difficulty recalling more than a couple of questions if the visit had taken place some time ago, Mr Chesser noted. Similarly, question 2(d), which required students to sketch a simple poster to alert people to dangers on farms or in horticultural production areas, could have caused problems for students with poor sketching abilities. Such students would have avoided the question, he said.
Section 2 also contained a few difficult questions, but Mr Chesser noted that question 7 on garden design was excellent and that his six students sitting the exam would have had no difficulty with it. However, question 4(d) on soil organisms could have been difficult.
Mr Chesser described the LCA agriculture/horticulture course as being excellent for people who wanted to go directly into work. "There's a great emphasis on safety, skills and self-evaluation in the course," he explained. "They have to know exactly why they are doing a particular task. For example, if they are taking cuttings they have to be aware of the reasons for doing the job in a particular way. The emphasis is not on rote learning but on practical experience." Students, he said, "blossom" on the course and become involved in the programme. "It can be a good entry route into landscape a gardening, for which there is plenty of scope in the current economic climate." Yesterday afternoon, some LCA students sat a two-hour paper in technology.
Sample question
LCA agriculture/horticulture
Garden design
(a) Name two important considerations when designing a garden.
(b) State whether the following statements are true or false:
(1) A patio is a type of garden fence;
(2) Moss can be a problem in poorly drained lawns;
(3) A lawn should not be considered in a garden design;
(c) Some gardens have "eyesores" (man-made structures used in storage or associated with waste removal) which cannot be readily removed. Describe an "eyesore" and what you would do to hide or camouflage it.
