“Once Upon a Plant...”
Celebrate spring’s regrowth with this lesson about the life of plants. Students will review plant anatomy and assume a plant’s point of view to write and illustrate a short story using key science vocabulary.
Objectives:
Students will:
-Learn about the anatomy of plants;
-Identify and sketch a plant of their choosing;
-Write a short story from the point of view of a plant or another member of its habitat using key vocabulary
Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.3
Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.2.D
Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform about or explain the topic.
Materials:
-Parts of a plant video
-Optional: books or websites that include images of plants
Products created:
-A sketch and a short story
Time:
1 to 2 class periods
Sequence:
1. Open by telling students that the first day of spring comes in late March. Remind them that spring is the season between winter and summer when temperatures start to rise. Different areas of the world experience the coming of spring differently — in some places, the temperature doesn’t change very much between seasons, while in other places, winter is much colder than spring or summer. However, we generally think of spring as a time of rebirth and regrowth. It’s when animals come out of hibernation, birds who migrated away from the cold during the winter return and plants begin to grow again.
2. Watch the Flocabulary Parts of a Plant video. Review the Key Terms as a class, and click on the blue lyrics under the Interactive Lyrics tab for additional infoboxes about the topic.
3. Tell students that now they’re going to have the chance to imagine what life as a plant would be like. Have them find a plant outside or in an illustration, or recall a plant they’ve seen in the past, and sketch it. This can be any kind of plant, like a tree, a flower, a blade of grass or a Venus flytrap. Optionally, you can have students label the parts of the plant on their sketches.
4. Have students write a short story from the point of view of their plant or the POV of a person, animal or object in their plant’s habitat, like a bee, a bird, a gardener or a lawnmower. Remind students that POV is who tells the story, and ask them to imagine how their writing would change if they wrote from a different point of view than that of the plant. Their stories should include at least three of the Key Terms from the video. Students can use the interactive lyrics infoboxes for more information and inspiration about plants’ lives.
Wrap Up/Extensions:
-Make a book with students’ illustrations and stories and add it to your classroom library.
-Ask students to compare and contrast life as a plant with life as a human. What would be different? What would stay the same?
-Ask students to write a parallel story from the same moment in time from a different point of view. If they originally wrote from the POV of the plant, have them choose another object, person or animal, and visa versa.
Guided Reflection:
“I used to think _______, and now I think _______.”
“One thing I learned is __________, and one question I still have is _________.”