Flower Power

This cross-curricular unit has included art (students developed a model of a flower and a bee) and language arts. “My goal for this year is to get more writing into the science curriculum,” Mrs. Jordan says. 

With partners, students carried out an investigation to determine how bees fly between flowers and cause pollination. They analyzed their data and constructed an explanation on whether or not their flower could produce seeds. During a dissection lab, the third graders inspected a Peruvian Lily’s ovary, understanding that this is the vessel that holds the seeds when pollinated.

This unit develops the idea that by studying how plants reproduce and pass on their traits, human beings have figured out how to make food plants even more useful to us. Then students are introduced to the process of plant domestication – the selection of traits based on inheritance and variation.

“I love this unit,” Mrs. Jordan says. “It’s letting the kids have the experience – the aha moment – when they cut the top of the ovary off and with a magnifying glass look at the seeds inside.”

 

PHOTOGRAPHY: Rhonda Spevak