Organisms
Lesson 13
Freshwater and Woodland Plants: How do They Compare?
Students now begin to APPLY what they have been learning to compare the freshwater plants with the woodland plants. They will begin to solidify the concepts of what plants need and they will broaden their knowledge of types of plants through reading.
3. Lesson set up and Management
SYSTEMS GLE 1.1.6 Understand characteristics of living organisms: identify observable characteristics of living organisms and observe and describe characteristics of living organisms.
SYSTEMS GLE 1.3.8 Know that most living things need food, water, and air: observe and record that most living things need food, water, and air and observe and record or demonstrate that plants need light.
INQUIRY GLE 2.1.1 Understand how to ask a question about objects, organisms and events in the environment: Ask questions about objects, organisms, and events based on observations of the natural world.
- Students compare and contrast freshwater and woodland plants to understand the characteristics of plants as organisms.
- Students observe and record data based on their observations.
- Students read about unusual plants to broaden their understanding of plants as organisms.
3. Lesson set up and Management
Materials:
- Run copies of the reading selection "Four Amazing Plants" from pages 155-159 of the Organisms Teacher’s Guide. Run one for each student.
- A large box & T-chart is a more user friendly graphic organizer than the Venn diagram as suggested in this unit.
- Hand out Post-its for students to write new observations on.
Student Management:
- Having students write new observations on Post-its both for similarities and differences can speed up the process. Teachers can group similar Post-its and move the discussion along faster by drawing student’s attention to what has been observed already rather than having them each volunteer their observations.
- The box & T-chart is a more user friendly graphic organizer than the Venn diagram as suggested in this unit.
- The reading selection, "Four Amazing Plants" could work as a Language Arts reading activity and serves as another nice integration of subjects.
Writing Support:
- Students could use the box & T-chart as a graphic organizer and then use a compare and contrast writing frame to organize their box & T-chart information into a scaffolded paragraph. When using the box & T-chart in the differences section for each statement about water plants they should make an opposing statement about woodland plants such as "the water plants float," or "the woodland plants are on the ground." This gives them an easy compare/contrast sentence structure.
- Be sure not to over use this compare/contrast writing strategy. There are several places in the unit that it could be used, pick one.
Reading Support:
- The reading selection,"Four Amazing Plants" could work as a language arts reading activity and serves as another nice integration of subjects.
Math Support:
- Have students interview family members and record their favorite fruits. Then they can graph the results. A graph template is available in the Organisms Teacher’s Guide. This graphing idea in the second bullet is a nice math extension working with data as well.