Plant Science

This week in P2/3 we continued our science research.  We discussed what we observed in the glasses from last week and what that showed us.

We noticed lots of bubbles appearing on the leaves, but where did they come from? The children weren't sure and gave a range of responses including from the air or the leaf. We talked about what happens when we go underwater and breathe out - what do you see then?

This example helped the students to understand that what they were seeing in the glasses was bubbles being released as the leaves breathed out.

I then told the class that the leaves breathe through lots of tiny little holes called stomata and we were going to try and see them.  We collected some leaves from the playground and looked at them through magnifying glasses and microscopes.

The next part of our lesson was thinking about whether plants move by themselves. This was another one of the ideas that the class had about what made something alive. The students were able to come up with some situations when plants do move on their own - growing being the main one.

We then watched a video which showed plants moving towards light (phototropism) and discussed that plants move towards the light as they need light to grow healthily.



Our final activity during this lesson was to prepare a plant maze for our own experiment to show that plants do move on their own. The idea for this lesson came from the wonderful Herbarium page.

We spent the morning preparing our plant mazes using empty paper boxes, card, tape and colouring in pens. The students personalised their boxes and designed their mazes in groups.

Check back next week to see how we progress.