Matter and Energy Flow in Organisms - Grade 5
Overview
Elementary school lessons utilize local phenomenon and are organized by grade level. By organizing instruction around local phenomenon, students are provided with a reason to learn shifting the focus from learning about a disconnected topic to figuring out why or how something happens. #Going 3D with GRC
Lesson - Plants Matter
Student Science Performance
Phenomenon: A tomato plant grows from a little seed.
Gather:
1. Students develop questions to plan an investigation about what a seed needs to become a plant.
Class Discussion about Questions to Investigate.
2. Students plan and carry out an investigation to gather evidence for what a seed needs to become a plant. (Materials: mung beans or similar plant seeds, jars, mesh, water, digital scale, pipette, paper towels. Grow for 2-3 weeks.)
3. Students use a class data chart (model) to record changes in plant growth.
4. Students obtain information about where plants get the matter they need to grow.
(Teaching Suggestions: The teacher will show the students a tomato seed and seedling plant from a local nursery. The students will be asked to look at the seed and plant and develop questions about how the seed turns into the plant. Any local vegetable plant can be used. #2 After students develop questions, they will share and discuss the questions. Students will prioritize the questions to determine which questions are going to help them explain the phenomenon. #3 Students will collect data daily and record in team charts and class charts.)
Reason:
5. Students analyze the data to find patterns to use as evidence.
6. Students construct an explanation for what a seed needs to become a plant.
(Teaching Suggestions: Students write their explanations in their notebooks.)
Class Discussion:
- What do you notice? What do you see in your data?
- Where is the matter coming from that causes the plant to grow? (conservation of matter)
- How does the matter get out of the air and water and into the plant?
- How are the tomato plant and mung bean plants similar in this investigation?
(Teaching Suggestions: Students should end the class discussion by finalizing their explanations of how a tomato plant grows from a seed. Evidence can be from text sources, data, or models. )
7. Students revise their explanation for how plants get the matter they need to grow
Communicate Reasoning:
8. Students develop an argument for how the evidence you have gathered supports the explanation that plants get the matter they need to grow from air and water.
(Teaching Suggestions: This is a good place to discuss with students their sources of evidence. You should use sentence frame and scaffolds from appendix C-1 to support students in performance #6 and #7.)
Additional Lessons can be found at #Going 3D with GRC (Gathering, Reasoning and Communicating). Original authors were: Cheryl Aldrich, Ana Appel, and Duane Willsey