Extensions: Natural Science connects with History (Colonial Herbs)
Adaptations: Gifted students can research herbs from the Colonial time period in history. Students will then select an herb to grow from seed and document sunlight requirements and results. ESL & Special Ed students can keep a journal of drawings that depict findings in experiment.
3.3.1
Identify the common structures of a plant including its roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds. Describe their functions.3.3.2
Investigate plant growth over time, take measurements in SI units, record the data and display the data in graphs. Examine factors that might influence plant growth.
Differentiation:
Have gifted and special needs students come up with a creative way to display their plant's structures. This can be oral, artistic, acted out, etc...
Using household items such as a shoebox, plastic wrap, potting soil, and an old sock, students can grow their own plants!
Students will tae care of their plants and chart the plant's progress and changes.
They will also analyze their plant's structures and compare their common structures with other plants while discussing their purpose.
Extensions: Life Science connects with Recycling (Environment).
Adaptations: Gifted students can determine other parts of plants that can be used instead of throwing away. ESL & Special Ed students can help with experiment or draw pictures of results of experiment.
Indoor Gardening with Kitchen Waste
Introduce experiment by talking about the six basic parts of plants: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruit, and seeds. Grow a garden by using plant scraps that usually get thrown away.
Supplies: 2-3 carrot tops, cut about 1 inch from the top, shallow bowl, pebbles (optional), sand, water, 1 fresh pineapple, pot of damp soil.
Multi-grade project that can you can differentiate according to skill and prior knowledge (experience). Older grade levels can research other possible materials to recycle from the kitchen in other ways.
4.3.3
Design investigations to explore how organisms meet some of their needs by responding to stimuli from their environments.4.3.4
Describe a way that a given plant or animal might adapt to a change arising from a human or non-human impact on its environment.
Differentiation:
Have ELL students record their biome's progress and changes using a picture graph.
In this activity, students will make a mini biome in the bottom of a one liter bottle. Students will be able to plant a seed and give it certain nutrients to watch it grow, adapt, and change to its environment.
state standard: 1.3.2
Great way to keep kids interested over a long period of time. The kids are excited to see what their biome is doing/ how things are frowing. You can explain that everything the plant needs to grow is in the biome. A enrichment idea off this activity would be to try and simulate the different conditions in each biome to an enviornment that is in our world (desert vs rainforest) and see how that affects each biome.
Students can plant all different types of plants. This project could be used for older students who are learning more details about plants or who are trying to do experiments on what makes plants grow best.
ELL and special needs students could help by planting the seeds in the box when first constructing the garden. Advanced students could draw and label the parts of the plants that were planted.
Adaptions: be sure to go over vocabulary. Also, you can chart and draw picture step by step of how the students are to put together their "greenhouses"
Extensions: You can extend this to higher grades by discussing the water cycle and demonstrating how the water cycle created moisture in the greenhouses in order to water the seeds. Also, if possible you can plan a fiend trip to a greenhouse, (a lot of times these are FREE and they will do demonstrations and age appropriate activities with the students!)
K.3.3 Describe and compare living plants in terms of growth, parts, shape, size, color and texture.
K.3.1 Observe and draw physical features of common plants and animals.
Make sure to add taking measurements in metric units to this activity in order to fully meet the standard. This unit could be connected to a social studies unit on the plants that are important to the local community and humans in general.
