Describe structures in plants and their roles in food production, support, water and nutrient transport, and reproduction.
| Name |
Description |
| If You Build It, It Will Grow! | 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. |
| We All Need Trees | 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. |
| Parts of a Plant | 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. |
| Fertilizing Fun! | 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. |
| Plant Package | 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 |
| Parts of a Plant - Dissection and Diagram | 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! |
| A-maze-ing Plants | 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. |
| Exploring Plants | 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. |
