Higher:
Is able to explain what conditions can affect plant growth
Middle:
Can describe what a healthy plant would grow like
Lower:
Is able to identify what plants need in order to grow healthily
Higher:
Middle:
Lower:
Lesson Recap Starter: Think back to the last lesson. What do plants needs in order to thrive?
Lesson Starter: What do plants need to survive? How do plants in the wild manage to thrive without somebody caring for them?
Do any children know already?
Make a mind-map of class ideas to refer back to.
Presentation - Starter Slide
Answer questions and take part in activities during the presentation. Stop the presentation at the relevant slides: Talk Partners; AfLs; Songs. Take part in the Choral Response Questions activity (see Assessment section) after the Keywords/Rocket Words slide.
Key Concept:
During this unit, each lesson contains a key concept question housed in the '30 Second Challenge' slide. To help children master this content so the knowledge moves from their short term memory to their long term memory, at the beginning of the follow on lesson the question from the previous lesson is revisited.
The questions covered during this unit include:
1. What do plants needs in order to thrive?
2. Why do plants need water, light, and a suitable temperature to grow well?
3. What is the difference between a bulb and a seed?
4. How do plants make their own food?
5. Why pollen is such an important part of a flower?
6. Why are flowers and seeds important?
Presentation
Expert Film: Dr Emma Bush is a rainforest scientist. Emma talks about the rainforest she works in.
How we deliver the Gatsby Benchmarks:
2 - Learning from career and labour market information: Pop along to Developing Experts career’s zone to find out about jobs in your area.
4 - Linking curriculum learning to careers: This unit showcases careers in the people who work with plants. Access our 360° virtual work tours.
7 - Encounters with Further and Higher Education: Pop along to Developing Experts career’s zone to find out about training providers in your area.
Presentation - Expert Film
Peas Please!
Explore what plants need in order to grow. Watch the Mission Assignment film to help.
Take 4 plastic or paper cups, and fill them with soil.
Get a pea seed and plant it in the soil of each one, just placing it underneath the surface of the soil with your finger.
Treat the peas differently, so that conditions are different for each one.
1. Watered and kept warm
2. Watered and kept cold
3. Dry and kept warm
4. Dry and kept cold.
Children to monitor growth of the different pea samples and record / draw growth on the handout. They can do this by taking photos of the different samples.
Plastic Cups
Soil
Watering jug with water
Peas (beans) to plant
Handout
Handout
Page 2 -The children are to draw and explain what they needed to do to plant their beans in up to 4 stages, using the video to help.
In the stretch and challenge the children are to give more detailed explanations.
Quiz
With their talk partners, the children are to go through the quiz at the end of the presentation and answer the questions.
Handout - page 2
Quiz in presentation
Can children make suggestions about what might happen when a seed is planted? Can they turn their ideas into questions?
Can they follow instructions to plant their seeds?
Can they generate further questions about growing plants?
Can children identify which questions can be investigated practically?
Do they make suggestions about how they might be investigated?
Can children draw the stages of what they need to do to plant broad beans?
Can they recognise that they need to water all of them to make it a fair test?
N/A
What do plants need to grow?
Choral Response Question / Suggested Phrase:
Plants need... (water, light and warmth)
Plants need water because...
Plants need light because...
Plants need warmth because...
If plants don't get any of these, they will...
The Science Behind the Science
Plants need plenty of water so they are able to photosynthesise and make their own food in the form of glucose. Light is also needed to carry out this reaction.
Different plants have different tolerances of temperature depending where they have grown and adapted to. Grapes have a very narrow range of temperatures where they are able to grow. To protect their crop from frost damage, grape farmers sometimes burn small fires in their fields. This stops frost forming on the grape plants because the heat keeps the air moving, and frost needs still air to form on the plant.
Frost is bad for plants because it damages the leaves of the plant. It is particularly damaging to the plant in Spring when it is growing young fruit and flower buds.
Observe and describe how seeds and bulbs grow into mature plants, and find out and describe how plants need water, light and suitable temperature to grow and to stay healthy.
Planet Earth - Biodiversity and interdependence - I can help to design experiments to find out what plants need in order to grow and develop. I can observe and record my findings and from what I have learned I can grow healthy plants in school. SCN 1-03a
The study of the characteristics, systems, and behaviours of humans and other animals, and of plants; the interactions and relationships between and among them, and with the environment.
Observing changes over time.
Gathering and recording data to help in answering questions.
Grade 3 Plants. Learn about how plants grow and their need for nutrients.
Say that plants need water and sunlight to survive and grow.