Astronaut Peggy Whitson helps out with a gardening activity that you could do at home or in the classroom.

Students will work in teams to determine how to best conduct an experiment outdoors to see if plants need sunlight and water to grow.

STUDENT ACTIVITY - 2nd Grade: This is a distance-learning lesson students can complete at home.Students will conduct a simple experiment to see if plants need sunlight and water to grow.This activity was created by Out Teach (out-teach.org), a nonprofit providing outdoor experiential learning to transform Science education for students in under-served communities.

Objectives:
* Learn about Native American culture
* Introduce codependent plants (ecosystems)

Students will explore the garden/outdoor classroom for examples of different plant structures and determine how plants use these structures to meet their needs.

This article assembles free resources from the Tundra: Life in the Polar Extremes issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears cyberzine into a unit outline based on the 5E learning cycle framework. Outlines are provided for Grades K-2 and 3-5.

This illustrated guide is designed to help students recognize and learn the different types of compound leaves. The single Web page can be easily printed for use at field sites. Along with a short description, an illustration that identifies a leaflet and petiole is included for each type: pinnate (odd) twice pinnate pinnate (even) palmate.

This laboratory manual is intended for use in a biology laboratory course taken by non-science majors, pre-biology, and pre-allied health majors.

Laboratory exercises provide students with experience in basic laboratory skills, gathering and organizing data, measuring and calculating, hypothesis testing, analysis of data, writing, and laboratory safety. The skill sets are designed to promote the development of critical thought and analysis. Students work with living and preserved specimens, and laboratory reagents and equipment.

Unit plans at two levels, K-grade 2 and grades 3-5 develop understanding of the issue theme, We Depend on Earth's Climate, by focusing on adaptations and environments of local plant species and polar mammals. The units are modeled after a learning cycle framework built around five key steps: Engage, Explore, Explain, Expand, and Assess. The lessons are aligned with national standards for science education and English language arts.

Unit plans for Grades K-2 and 3-5 are a regular feature of the magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The plans draw on articles and resources in a themed issue and are aligned with national science and language arts standards. This unit is designed to provide elementary students with the opportunity to investigate how the annual rings in trees help scientists learn about past climates. It uses hands-on experiences and nonfiction text to answer the unit question: How do trees help scientists learn about the past?

The purpose of the resource is to develop hypotheses about which environmental factors are most important to plants.

Incorporating your schoolyard into your classroom can be a powerful tool for making learning meaningful and engaging for your students. Local and relevant phenomena can engage your student’s prior understandings, better connect to their interests and identities, and help in draw in students who don’t see science, reading or writing connecting to their lives.  This online course is a series of professional development workshops for Early Elementary (K-2) educators, developed by IslandWood with funding from the OSPI ClimeTime Grant. A slide deck and accompanying handouts supplement the course outline for a complete picture. 

This professional development course consists of a series of workshops focused on NGSS-aligned & local phenomenon-centered curriculum, developed by IslandWood with funding from the OSPI ClimeTime Grant. It is currently structured to be delivered online and for Upper Elementary (3-5) educators. A slide deck and accompanying handouts are available to complement the course outline. 

With this lesson students will read "The Tiny Seed" by Eric Carle to explore the needs of plants.

What is your one final driving question?    What do plants, animals, and people need to stay alive?Background information of this driving question:    What grade are you working?    I am working with kindergarten but this could also be used in a first grade class to teach them about needs and wants. Which standard are you targeting?    I am targeting a kindergarten life science standard.K.LS.3    Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive.My grabber is a video from Peep and the Big Wide World. The name of the episode is “Peep Plants a Seed.” The video is about 8 minutes long. After they watch the video we will plant a bean seed.  Introductory Grabber:The teacher will start out by introducing the idea of things that are needed to survive for people and then showing the Peep video. The video is just about Peep learning how to plant a seed and take care of it. After the video the the teacher will ask about the video, and then introduce the plan of planting a bean seed. This is an effective way to to introduce the topic because they will already have an idea of how to take care of a plant and they will want to be able to experience the same as Peep.Link to the video and bean plant instructionshttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxs7P7LWzDghttp://www.greatgrubclub.com/grow-a-bean-plant#.WMlOuZH3ahA

In this activity, students use models to investigate the process and consequences of water contamination on the land, groundwater, and plants. This is a good introduction to building water filters found in the associated activity, The Dirty Water Project.

The teacher leads a discussion in which students identify the physical needs of animals, and then speculate on the needs of plants. With guidance from the teacher, the students then help design an experiment that can take place in the classroom to test whether or not plants need light and water in order to grow. Sunflower seeds are planted in plastic cups, and once germinated, are exposed to different conditions. In particular, within the classroom setting it is easy to test for the effects of light versus darkness, and watered versus non-watered conditions. During exposure of the plants to these different conditions, students measure growth of the seedlings every few days using non-standard measurement. After a few weeks, they compare the growth of plants exposed to the different conditions, and make pictorial bar graphs that demonstrate these comparisons.

This second-grade unit on plant reproduction and habitats starts with students exploring the kinds of plants they find growing in different places around their school and neighborhood. Their explorations reveal some surprising places where plants are sprouting. This raises a series of questions and ideas for investigations related to why different plants grow in different places.

Act out the stages of two different life cycles and compare how they are similar and different.

Your ukulele-playing tour guide, Greggory, is about to take you on a wild and weird adventure into the park! She’ll show you how to act out and compare the life cycle stages of a tomato plant and a lady beetle.

Learning Objective: investigate and compare how animals and plants undergo a series of orderly changes in their diverse life cycles.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"A new report in the journal Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education describes a laboratory activity meant to help students understand allelopathy – a type of chemical warfare used by plants to secure the resources needed to grow. In this process, plants release biochemicals that affect the growth or development of neighboring plants. It is a common tactic of invasive plant species. The mechanism has also been used in agricultural production systems as a sustainable and organic way to manage weeds and soil fertility. For example, horseradish produces the molecule sinigrin, which is hydrolyzed in the presence of the enzyme myrosinase to generate allyl isothiocyanate, or AITC. AITC has been shown to have allelopathic effects on lettuce, including reduced and delayed seed germination rates, decreased root hair growth, and decreased root length. Mustard green also contains AITC and is widely utilized to control weed growth in current agriculture production..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.