Growing Students in Science
Fourth Grade: Plants |
Fall
The focus of the fall program is structure, function and diversity of plants. The program begins with the students identifying the basic structure and function of plant parts including roots, stems, leaves and flowers. Next students learn to classify plants into groups of herbaceous plants, trees or shrubs according to the plant’s characteristics.
Students search for seeds and classify the seeds according to whether they traveled by animal, wind or plant. The students visit the wildflower garden to learn about fern and horsetail plant fossils. They compare the fossils with the present day plants. Finally, the students wrap up their trip with a proficiency activity, a dichotomous key, that classifies plants by characteristics.
Winter
Students learn about flower structure and function. They select everyday items which match the function of the parts of a plant and flower, to help construct a plant model.
The students identify and explain the function of the flower and learn
about pollination. In addition students start their spring unit by planting various seeds. They record their observations of plant growth over time.
Spring
Through an investigation that begins in the classroom and continues at Holden, students explore the pattern of change that occurs during the life cycle of a plant. As a seed grows from a seedling to a mature plant, then flowers and ripens its fruit produces a new crop of seeds. Students observe, measure and record these changes as they grow a variety of plants from seed in the classroom. They explore the structure of a seed, dissect flowers and look inside different fruits to
compare the number of seeds each produce.
At Holden students discover they can recognize growth stages such as seedling, flowering and fruiting in a diversity of plants. They compare the different length in lifecycles of trees and other plants, and discover these cycles are often dependent on interactions with pollinators. Through their experiences, students build an understanding of a plant life cycle as a predictable sequence of changes that occur as a plant grows from a seed to produce the seeds that start the next generation.
