Structures of Life
Investigation 2: Growing Further
Part 2
Hydroponics
Students continue to grow bean seedlings in a hydroponics setup.
3. Lesson set up and Management
Nature of Forces:
1.3.L.1 Recognize that living things need constant energy supplied from food or light.
1.3.L.3 Describe how its environment, other life forms, and availability of food and/or other resources influence an organism's behavior and ability to survive.
2.1.5 Record and report observations, explanations, and conclusions using written, oral and mathematical expression.
Plants need water, light, and nutrients to grow.
Hydroponics is the technique of growing plants in water.
3. Lesson set up and Management
Materials:
1. Practice putting plants into the hydroponics holders. The plants can break easily. It is better to have two people put plants in; one person holds open the section the plant will be placed into, and the other person places the plant into the correct slot.
2. Don't let the water in your hydroponics get too warm. Change it every week by using regular tap water and the nutrients.
3. Place a piece of tape on the hydroponics container and number each plant. Individual students can keep track of one plant and its growth. When changing water make sure to place the plants back in the correct number.
4. Keep plants near sunlight.
5. The nutrient powder should not be consumed. Warn children of its danger.
6. Make student sheet No. 8 into a transparency for use on the overhead.
7. Be prepared to observe plants for approximately 2 months.
8. Be sure to only use two of the containers for the hydroponics because you will need the other two for your snails. If you have more than 24 students, either have some students share plants or create your own hydroponics container.
Have one person hold onto the plant holder and separate the spot where the plant is to be placed while the other person places the plant in the holder. |
A plant holder full of plants ready to be placed into the hydroponics container. |
Once the plants have been placed safely into the holder, set it into the hydroponics container filled with nutrient water. |
Student Management:
1. Keep all materials at the station at which the students are working. Let the students go to each workstation and explore.
2. Set rules and guidelines for observing the plants during non-science times.
3. Keep Moving! If you are constantly moving, it will keep everyone on task.
4. Remind students not to touch classmates' plants as the plants are fragile and will break easily and die.
1. You can lengthen or shorten the time on any lesson.
2. Use pages 2 & 3 to help guide further inquiry at the end of every part.
3. Give students time to discuss amongst themselves their observations.
4. Keep word bank and content inquiry charts up so students can see and have more time to copy later, if needed. It's nice if you can keep them up all the time and just add to them as you go.
5. Once all of the plants are in the hydroponics containers, you can now either throw away or send home the remaining seeds and put away the sprouters.
6. Be prepared: in the next lesson you will be tearing apart a few plants. You may have many or all kids who will not want to destroy their plant. If so, you may want to have a back-up plant to tear apart as a whole class activity.
Writing Support:
1 . Have students reflect on the day's lesson in their journal.
2. Start and finish each lesson with a KWLQ chart. ("What do I know?" "What do I want to know?" "What have I learned?" and "Are there any more questions to investigate?")
3. Have students write all word banks and inquiries in their journals.
4. Keep journal entries of the growth of the plants. Be sure students include drawings and labels.
Reading Support:
1. Read FOSS Science Story Hydro-growing.
2. Check the Resources section of the teacher's guide for more reading suggestions, or the literature link on this site.