Y07W23WR Reviving the School Kitchen Garden

Part 1

How to Write

Transactional – Action plan

An action plan proposes concrete steps to address a specific problem or achieve a goal. It is written for an audience who needs to understand what will be done, who will do it and how. The tone should be practical and organised — the reader needs to believe the plan is genuinely workable.

  • Ideas & content: Identify the core problem clearly before proposing solutions. Each step in your plan should address a specific aspect of the problem and be genuinely achievable.
  • Structure & cohesion: Organise your plan logically — state the problem, list the actions and explain how each one will work. Use numbered steps or clear headings to aid clarity.
  • Voice & audience: Write in a clear, professional tone appropriate for a formal document. Avoid vague language — your audience needs specifics, not general principles.
  • Language choices: Use precise verbs for actions such as identify, assign, implement and monitor. Write in the future tense for proposed steps. Keep sentences short and direct.
  • Conventions: Spell all key terms accurately. Use clear sentence structure and consistent formatting. Punctuate lists correctly.

Common pitfalls: Proposing ideas that are too vague or too ambitious to be realistic — an action plan needs to be something that could actually happen. Skipping the explanation of how each step would work in practice.

Part 2

Your Task Plan for Today

The brief

Question: Write an action plan proposing how the school kitchen garden could be revived and made sustainable. Identify the key problems clearly, propose specific practical steps and explain what would need to happen for each step to work. Write in a clear, organised format appropriate for a document that will be presented at a formal committee meeting.

Stimulus: Your school’s student kitchen garden has been struggling. Student participation has dropped off, the garden is under-maintained and there is a risk it will be discontinued. The teacher who runs it has asked interested students to write a short action plan proposing what could be done to revive participation and make the garden sustainable going forward. Plans will be presented at the next student environment committee meeting.

Task Analysis: This task asks you to identify the causes of a real problem and propose practical, specific steps to address it. The audience is a formal committee, so your plan needs to be clearly organised and realistic — not just a list of good intentions, but a sequence of steps that could actually be implemented.

Quick Plan

Before you write, plan:

  • The specific problems — why has participation dropped? What is the real issue?
  • Two or three concrete actions to address each problem
  • What each action requires to work — who is responsible, what resources are needed?
  • How you will know if the plan is working

Format rules

An action plan for a committee meeting should be clearly organised — use numbered steps, short clear sentences and specific details. Avoid writing in the style of an essay. Each step should stand alone as a clear action item.

Key details to include

For each proposed step, explain: what exactly will happen, who will do it and what will be needed to make it work. Vague steps like “increase engagement” are less useful than specific ones like “assign each tutor group one garden bed per term”.

Tone & voice

Write professionally and constructively. Avoid complaints about what has gone wrong — focus on solutions. The committee needs confidence that your plan could actually work.

Closing line

End with a clear statement of what a successfully revived garden would look like. Give the committee a picture of the goal, not just a list of steps.