Plants are Living Too

Items for Lesson:

 Book – Seed to Plant National Geographic Kids

 Dirt
 Clear plastic cups
 Plastic plates
 Bean seeds
 Graph paper (to chart growth)
 Ruler
 Science journal (for each student)
 Water
 Sunlight (can use window or artificial sun lamp for plants)
 Annotated images
 Computer
 Projector

Objective:

Second Grade Science:

Standard 4: Life Science. Students will gain an understanding of Life Science through the study of
changes in organisms over time and the nature of living things.

Objective 2: Identify basic needs of living things (plants and animals) and their abilities to meet
their needs.

**Taken from the Common Core State Standards on uen.org

Steps:

This lesson will be spread out over a couple of weeks, however the bulk of the lesson will be in
the next few days. We are learning about the parts of plants, how and what they need to grow.

Ask students: Do any of you have a garden or plants at home? What are things that plants need
to grow? Possible answers: sun, water, soil

During this unit we will be growing our own bean plants in class and monitoring their growth.
We will be growing the beans in the clear plastic cups and as they grow we will track how much they
grow using the graph paper, and then record our findings, observations, and drawings in our science
journals.

We will put some dirt in the plastic cup, put the seed in, cover it with dirt, water it, and put it on
the window sill to soak up lots of sun. As the plants grow we will chart the growth of the plant each day
as it grows. We will use the ruler to measure the plant each day.
Now that our plants have been planted in their cups we are going to read a book about plants called
Seed to Plant.

Ask students and wait for choral responses: What part of the plant is in the soil and helps get nutrients
to the rest of the plant? Roots. What part of the plant supports the plant above the ground and helps
transport the nutrients to the rest of the plant? Stem. What part of the plant absorbs sunlight and makes
food for the plant? Leaves.

Here is a handout to help us review what we have learned so far about the life cycle of a plant as well as
the parts of a plant.

We will refer back to this annotated illustration throughout the unit.

At the end of the unit I will assess my students learning. I will be reviewing their science journals and
reading through their observations, notes, and drawings of the classroom plants. I also will be giving
them this handout that they will need to fill in with the appropriate vocabulary words.