A sorting activity serves as a pre-assessment of student knowledge in Plant Parts , lesson 2. They then go outside to study plants at the end of the growing season. In lesson 3, Out With the Old, In With the New , students learn that while drying leaves, dead shoots, and spreading of seeds appears to be the end of the life cycle, it is also the beginning. Students focus their notebooks on the goals of this unit in My Six Questions About Plants , lesson 4, an exercise in which they compose six questions about plants which they will attempt to answer by the end of the unit. They learn the basics of a flowering plant life cycle and begin growing plants that they will continue to observe throughout the year in Life Cycle of a Flowering Plant , lesson 5.
Plants live most of their lives anchored to a certain place.
Their survival is dependent upon their ability to resist forces of wind, water, gravity, and animals that could uproot or break them. Students see how roots can penetrate into a substrate, and they observe the strength with which living plants hold onto the soil in lesson 6, Root Power . Plants have special structures for obtaining water and nutrients, distributing them to all tissues, and using these materials to efficiently produce food. Students learn that there is Another Reason for Roots , lesson 9, as they see how roots absorb water by the process of osmosis. Water and nutrients are seen to be distributed through the plant in vascular structures in Water Movement Through Plants , lesson 10.