Description
What our How Plants Grow lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: How Plants Grow teaches students all about plants and what they need to survive. Students will discover the different parts of a plant. They will also learn to identify the things a plant needs to grow. This lesson is for students in 1st grade, 2nd grade, and 3rd grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the yellow box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand. This lesson requires large clear plastic cups or jars, seeds, and paper towels or napkins. Before you start the lesson, you will need to acquire both a seed and a related full-grown plant for the lesson opening. You will also need enough of two kinds of seeds for the supplies for the activity.
Options for Lesson
In the “Options for Lesson” section of the classroom procedure page, you will find a number of suggestions for extra tasks or activities to incorporate into the lesson. One suggestion is to open the lesson with a time-lapse video of a plant growing. You could also have students work in pairs and write down their observations about how plants grow, starting from a seed and continuing throughout the growing process. They could measure the plant’s size and development in a “Plant Journal.” Another suggestion is to make extra seed cups and place one in the dark, one under a lamp, one in a refrigerator, and others in other places to compare their growth. A final option is to do the activity first and then present the rest of the lesson during observations.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page provides a paragraph of extra information or guidance. It reminds you that this lesson explores the basic needs of plants and touches on the process of photosynthesis. It suggests that you spend time on specific areas, such as pollination or the needs of plants, depending on the grade level. Use the blank lines on this page to write down any other thoughts you have before presenting the lesson to your students.
HOW PLANTS GROW LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Plants and Soil
The How Plants Grow lesson plan has three pages of content. The first page introduces students to plants and describes why and how there are so many different kinds of plants throughout the world. Students will discover that they can find plants virtually anywhere, including in their own house! Someone must care for them each day by providing water, sunlight, and nutrients through the soil. Some plants even provide people with the fruits and vegetables they love.
Plants, like humans and other animals, are living organisms. In order to grow, the majority of plants need a number of specific things. To progress from a small seed to a healthy plant, they have to have soil rich in nutrients, sunlight, water, and air.
Plants will find most of the nutrients they need in the soil. These nutrients include nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. Nitrogen is what causes the leaves of plants to be green. Phosphorous contributes to the overall health and strength of the plant and its root system. Larger plants probably indicate a good source of phosphorous. Potassium helps the plant fight off diseases. Plants must have healthy soil to grow properly. And the soil also supports the plant and helps prevent it from falling over.
Sunlight, Air, and Water
The next elements students will learn about are sunlight, air, and water. The sun produces energy through the light that plants can use to make food. The leaves are the part of the plant that makes this process, photosynthesis, happen. Without this process, plants would not be able to survive. However, too much sunlight can be harmful. If a plant receives too much sunlight, it could die. Not enough sunlight, on the other hand, can cause the plant to stop growing.
Another important element is air. From the air, plants receive carbon dioxide, a component that, like sunlight, contributes to the process of photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide also allows plants to use the sun’s energy to make its food and grow. Plants release oxygen into the air as part of this process as well. Oxygen is essential to the survival of the living organisms, like humans, throughout the world.
Finally, plants need water. Water is necessary for the plant to grow healthy and strong. The water a plant receives helps guide nutrients to the plant through its roots, stem, and leaves. It is possible for plants to receive too much water. Just as too much sunlight harms plants, overwatering them can yield the same results.
Other Needs
There are a few other elements that affect the health of a plant. One of those is temperature. One of the main reasons certain plants grow in certain areas has to do with temperature. Plants can grow very strong in the right temperature. Most grow well in warm daytime temperatures and cooler nighttime temperatures. If it’s too hot, the plant can dry up and burn. On the other hand, it can freeze if it’s too cold outside.
One more element that contributes to a plant’s healthy growth is space. Plants need room and time to grow into healthy, strong, full-size plants. Without room to grow, they can become too small and not reach their full potential. And if an area has many plants that overcrowd each other, they can suffer from a disease caused by lack of air.
The last page of the lesson plan provides a summary of what a plant needs to grow. Plants start out as small seeds. They come in many varieties that exist all over the world. Some are really large, like trees, and some are very small, like a blade of grass. They have specific needs in order to survive and grow to their full potential, just like humans or animals do.
The bottom of the page displays a diagram that labels various aspects of plants along with the elements involved in photosynthesis. It does not directly represent the process or show the cycle. It simply labels components like carbon dioxide, light energy, oxygen, and glucose. The other labels are sunlight, minerals, water, and root. The very bottom of the page asks students if they can explain what is happening in the picture.
HOW PLANTS GROW LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The How Plants Grow lesson plan contains two worksheets: an activity worksheet and a homework assignment. These worksheets will help reinforce the material students learned in the lesson. The activity in particular provides a hands-on experience to really solidify their grasp of the lesson concepts. The guidelines on the classroom procedure page outline when to hand out each worksheet to the class.
PLANT A SEED ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity, students will observe the growth of two seeds that they plant. They will use paper towels, some kind of container, and water. First, they will follow the directions to plant the seeds. Then they will draw what the seeds look like on different dates over the course of two weeks. There should be about seven pictures for each seed. At the very end, they will write a short paragraph about what they learned.
HOW PLANTS GROW HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
The homework assignment lists 15 words in a word bank. Students will read through 15 statements and fill in the blanks with the correct term. You can decide whether or not you allow students to refer to the content pages for help on the assignment.
Worksheet Answer Keys
The last page of the lesson plan is an answer key for the homework assignment. It provides the correct responses in red. There should be no variation in students’ responses to any of these questions. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits this final page. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep the answer key as reference for yourself when grading the homework assignment.
