Taylor

Braggins

7/15/14

Students and Nature:

What makes our plants grow?
Stage 1 Desired Results
Standards for Learning: Established Goals
Science Goals

LS2.A: Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems
Plants depend on water and light to grow. (2-LS2-1)
Plants depend on animals for pollination or to move their seeds around. (2-LS2-2)

LS4.D: Biodiversity and Humans
There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on
land and in water. (2-LS4-1)


English Language Arts Goals

New York State Common Core: Reading: Informational Text: Key Ideas & Details
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.2.1
Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate
understanding of key details in a text.

New York State Common Core: Reading: Informational Text: Key Ideas & Details
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.2.3
Describe the connection between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or
steps in technical procedures in a text.

New York State Common Core: Reading: Informational Text: Craft & Structure
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.2.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 2 topic or subject
area.

New York State Common Core: Language: Vocabulary Acquisition & Use
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.2.5.B
Distinguish shades of meaning among closely related verbs (e.g., toss, throw, hurl) and closely related
adjectives (e.g., thin, slender, skinny, scrawny).

New York State Common Core: Writing: Text Types & Purposes
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.3
Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events,
include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event
order, and provide a sense of closure.

Taylor Braggins

7/15/14

New York State Common Core: Speaking & Listening: Comprehension & Collaboration
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.2.2
Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or
through other media.

New York State Common Core: Speaking & Listening: Presentation of Knowledge & Ideas
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.2.4
Tell a story or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking
audibly in coherent sentences.

Major Understandings
Big Ideas:
What plants need to grow. How seeds disperse
and then grow into plants. Parts of a plant and
plant characteristics. Local plant names.

Specific Understandings:
Through books and discussion, children learn
how seeds disperse. Children observe the inside
of a seed, and then keep it moist to watch it
germinate. When the plants get large enough,
children will plant them and watch them grow.
They measure, observe, describe, and journal
about their plants. They learn the terminology
for the parts of a plant to better describe them.
Children make connections to their own world
by observing plants in the schools yard and
learning to identify them with a field guide. The
children also experiment with already growing
plants to see whether they truly need sun and
water to survive, instilling deep connections to
the concept.

Predictable Misunderstandings &
Misconceptions:
- Seeds need to be in the sun to germinate.
- All plants need the same amount of sun and
water to grow.
- Not all plants have flowers.

Essential Questions

- What do you think makes a plant, a plant?

- Why do certain plants grow in certain
places? What plants live in our area?
- What is a seed and where does it come
-

from? Why are there so many different

kinds of seeds?
What is the relationship between a plant
and a seed? How would you find out how a
seed becomes a plant?
How does a plants body compare to a
human body?
How would you find out what plants need to
live and grow?
Why do plants need sun and water?
How are plants important to us?
If you were a plant, how would you feel and
what would you experience?

Taylor Braggins

7/15/14
Stage 2 Assessment Evidence
Performance Tasks:

- Notebooks of written observations and measured

growth of students plants
- Diamante poem
- Chart of seed dispersal methods
- Group poster of plant parts
- Guided reading written responses
- Educreations iPad Movie about how a plant
grows
- Narrative from a plants perspective
Evaluation Criteria

Rubrics for:
- Notebooks
- Diamante poem
- Chart of seed dispersal methods
- Posters of plant parts
- Guided Reading
- Educreations iPad Movie
- Narrative

Other Evidence:

- Oral or written response to essential

questions
- Quiz on related plant understandings
- Journal entries
- Ongoing formative observation of

participation and engagement in study

Student Reflection & Self Assessment

Exit tickets
Ongoing reflections in notebooks
Informal assessment of understanding
Habits of scholarship are observable
Analyze participation in guided reading
group and class discussions

Stage 3 Table of Contents: Lesson Plans for Learning Activities

Lesson / Activity #1: Introduce the unit by observing the area outside the school What do you see?
What do you think makes a plant, a plant? Why do certain plants grow in certain places? Classify and
draw our plants.
Title: Discovering the plants in our backyard
Description: Take the students outside. They will make observations of all of the things they can see,
smell, touch, or hear. They will discover that most of what is there is plants! Brainstorm together:
what do you think makes a plant, a plant? Then the students will closely observe the wildflowers and
plants we have here, and learn how to use a field guide to name some of them. Students will choose
one flower to draw or color, and then write a diamante poem about the flower using descriptive
words. For the rest of the unit, we will try to discover what makes a plant, a plant!
Objective / Learning Target: I can use a field guide to name the plants we have in our school yard. I
can use descriptive language to describe my chosen plant. (Short Term LT)
I can explain how a seed turns into a flower, and what it needs to do so. (Long Term LT)
Related Assessment: Ongoing journaling, multiple drafts of poem, rubric for final polished poem with
sketch and label.

Taylor Braggins

7/15/14

Lesson / Activity #2: What are seeds? Where do they come from? Why are there so many different
seeds? Observe the seeds in different plants both outside in our yard and indoor examples such as
apples and nuts, and then classify seeds based on their dispersal methods.
Title: Seeds
Description: Observe various examples of seeds. Cut open fruits, inspect nuts, and examine our own
flowers, plants, and seeds outside. Do all plants have seeds? What do the seeds do? Where do they
come from? Why are there so many different kinds? Interactive read-aloud with the book Flip, Float,
Fly and discuss how seeds get to different places to grow flowers. Categorize the seeds we have
found by the method they use to disperse. Why is it important that seeds disperse?
Objective / Learning Target: I can explain the relationship between plants and seeds.
Related Assessment: Ongoing journaling, rubric for chart with seeds and their dispersal methods.

Lesson / Activity #3: What is the relationship between a plant and a seed? How do seeds become
plants? Experiment to see the insides of seeds, and to observe them as they sprout into plants.
Title: Seed germination and sprouting
Description: Students will look carefully observe lima bean seeds that have been soaked. They will
cut them open with plastic knives to try to figure out how a seed can sprout into a plant. Then,
students will plant new bean seeds in a plastic bag with a moist paper towel so they can watch the
seeds as they sprout. The students will have to keep the paper towels moist and write down daily
observations and measurements in their notebooks.
Objective / Learning Target: I can explain how a seed becomes a plant.
Related Assessment: Ongoing journaling, rubric for notebook
Lesson / Activity #4: How does a plants body compare with a human body?
Title: Plant parts
Description: Outside, groups of students will investigate plants to decide which parts they need
names for and which parts they might already know. Each group will choose one flower to take
inside to look at more closely. Groups will use a labeled diagram to try to label their own plant by
taping it to a piece of paper and drawing arrows and boxed in labels, emulating a scientific drawing.
Objective / Learning Target: I can name the parts of a plant. I can work as a group to make meaning
together.
Related Assessment: Ongoing journaling, rubric for notebooks
Lesson / Activity #5: How would you find out what a plant needs to live and grow? Small group
experiments to see whether plants do need water and sunlight to grow.
Title: Experimenting with plant needs
Description: In groups, students will decide the things they think a plant needs to grow (with
guidance toward including at least water and sunlight) and then will be guided to create a hypothesis
about it, and devise an experiment to test it. The class collective information will inform the results.
Objective / Learning Target: I can create an experiment to prove a hypothesis. I can be an active and
respectful member of a group.
Related Assessment: Ongoing journaling, rubric worksheet with hypothesis and experiment set-up.

Taylor Braggins

7/15/14

Lesson / Activity #6: Why do plants need sun and water? Guided Reading Lesson on Informational
Text
Title: Small Group Reading Circles Cooking with Sunshine: How Plants Make Food"
Description: In differentiated reading groups, students participate in guided reading of this book.
Reading strategies include recognizing and using content vocabulary, asking who, what, where, when,
why to understand details, identifying the main purpose of pieces of the text, and describing
connections in the scientific ideas.
Objective / Learning Target: I can be an active participant in a reading group. I can describe
connections between science ideas in an informational text.
Related Assessment: Ongoing journaling, text comprehension quiz
Lesson / Activity #7: Creating an Educreations iPad movie to describe how a seed becomes a plant
and how that is important to us.
Title: Students as Teachers
Description: Using their understandings from their experiments and guided reading groups, the will
make an Educreations movie that explains to kindergarteners how a seed turns into a flower, and
what it needs to do so. The movies are made on an iPad, with the students creating diagrams,
visuals, and words while they simultaneously explain verbally. The app records their voices in time
with their drawing/writing.
Objective / Learning Target: I can explain what a plant needs to grow. I can teach this to
kindergartners through an Educreations movie.
Related Assessment: Planning chart for Educreations movie, drafts and final Educreations movie
Lesson / Activity #8: If you were a plant, how would you feel? What would you experience? Creative
writing narrative from the perspective of a plant.
Title: If I were a seed
Description: Students will take their knowledge of plant parts, descriptive writing practice from
Diamante poems, understanding of what plants need to grow, and knowledge of how seeds travel
and become plants to write a narrative from the perspective of a seed as it grows into a plant.
Students describe the sequence of events using temporal words, describe thoughts and feelings as a
plant, and provide closure at the end. Parents will be invited to the school to hear the stories read,
and to see the work that the students have done in this unit, including their own plants!
Objective / Learning Target: I can use time words to describe events in order. I can use my
understandings of plants to write a creative story.
Related Assessment: Rubric for narrative.