Big Idea 14: Organization and Development of Living Organisms

Model of floral structure with labeled parts.

Type: Image/Photograph

During this engineering design challenge, students will create a container to help a local nursery grow sunflowers efficiently. Students will use their knowledge of plant growth to develop a strategy and choose which materials would be best for their sunflower's growth.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this project students are challenged to build a greenhouse and plant seeds using the Engineering Design Process. They will measure plant growth over time and assess the quality of their greenhouses according to the results. Through this process students will gain an understanding of how plants respond to stimuli (heat, light, gravity) and will understand that plants need energy from the sun to make their own food. By designing and testing their greenhouses students will understand that using different materials can result in different outcomes. Students will observe different plant growth patterns and record their results. By doing this, students will see the importance of accurate note taking and be able to participate in group discussions by providing their evidence organized in graphs and tables.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson plan students are challenged with building a self-sufficient terrarium.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a design challenge that requires students to cooperatively create a plant terrarium through the process of asking questions, imagining what the design would look like, planning the design, creating the design, testing the design, improving the design, and finally testing their redesign.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students are often surprised to learn how many different products we get from trees. Use this activity to help your students learn just how much we depend on trees in our daily lives.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, third grade students learn the basic functions of a plant and recognize their importance (flower, stem, seed, leaf, and roots). The lesson will provide students the opportunity to review parts of a plant with a five flap activity.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students are selected to develop procedures for conducting a study on plant fertilizers. They are given data to determine which fertilizer is best for school gardens based on growth rate, size of vegetables, amount of vegetables, taste, and color. They will reassess these fertilizers during the twist incorporating safety ratings.

Students may arrange the criteria based on their team's interpretation of most important to least important. Students may have to make trade-offs based on these interpretations.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

The Plant Package MEA provides students with an engineering problem in which they are asked to rank different plant containers using recycled materials.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem, while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought process. MEAs follow a problem-based, student centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson,students will watch two videos about and read an article on flowering plant parts and their functions. Students will then dissect their own plants, draw a diagram, and write an informative structured paragraph describing the plant parts and their functions. Good lesson to use in science journals!

Type: Lesson Plan

This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help students apply the concepts of flowering plants, plant structures, and plant responses to stimuli as they build mazes to demonstrate a plant"s response to light. It is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will be introduced to the study of plants in this lesson. First they will sprout bean seeds on moistened paper towels, then make drawings and measurements of their growth. They will watch time-lapse videos that illustrate a plant's major growth stages. Another clip covers fruits and asks students to consider how their seeds are spread. They will gather seeds by walking outside with an old sock over one of their shoes, then plant their sock to observe the resulting plants.

Type: Lesson Plan

Explore how plants respond to stimuli in the world as you complete this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Explore the parts that make up many of the plants around you in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Wilbert Butler explains the role of light in plants.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

How do plants respond to gravity? See how gravity affects plant root growth using plant seeds, plastic zip-lock bags, paper towels, and a large cardboard box or dark closet.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will investigate the effects of temperature on growing plants.

Type: Teaching Idea

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article is a description of how a plant responds to light, gravity, and heat.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article describes the function of the different parts of a plant.

Type: Text Resource

Younger students can learn about plant biology. Topics include characteristics of living things, germination and growth, the basic parts of plants, photosynthesis, reproduction, and ecological adaptations of plants. The information presented can also be ordered as a video.

Type: Text Resource

This resource provides information about plant parts and their function with an interactive graphic that assists with identifying the parts of many plants we eat and a simulation about how seeds develop into fruit.

Type: Text Resource

In this series of lessons, students learn about the major plant structures and explore their functions.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

This is a short time-lapse video of sunflower seeds germinating in either light or dark conditions. Different patterns of growth are observable. Includes descriptions of what is being seen.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

Plants In Motion is a set of time-lapse movies (embedded in the website) that show how plants respond to stimuli (gravity, light, diurnal patterns). The movies allow students a way to visualize plant processes that take much longer to observe.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation