Investigate and describe how plants respond to stimuli (heat, light, gravity), such as the way plant stems grow toward light and their roots grow downward in response to gravity.
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Watch Me Sprout...Watch Me Grow, Grow! | 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. |
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. |
Terrarium | In this lesson plan students are challenged with building a self-sufficient terrarium. |
Response to the Cues | 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. |
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. |