Kelsey Foreman

SCE 320
Final Integrated Science Lesson

Lesson Title: How do Plants Grow?

Grade: 2nd

Learning Outcomes
 Students will engage in science process skills while investigating the essential
question: how do plants grow?
 Students will be able to work cooperatively as a member of the Plant Caretaker Team.
 Students will be able to write a persuasive letter to the school board to persuade them
to purchase raised garden beds for the school.

Standards
 4.1.2.F Science as Inquiry
 4.1.2.D Identify differences in living things (color, shape, size, etc.) and describe how
adaptations are important for survival.
 4.1.3.E Identify changes in the environment over time.
 CC.1.4.2.I Support the opinion with reasons that include details connected to the opinion.

Anticipatory Set
 “Boys and girls, over the weekend, I visited someplace very cool and guess what? I
brought back some souvenirs for all of you! Can anyone guess where I went this
weekend? I bet none of you can guess.” (take a few guesses) “I went to a Farmer’s
Market! Does anyone know what a farmer’s market is?” (take a few answers) “That’s
right! A farmer’s market is a place where farmers bring their crops like vegetables and
flowers that they grew on their farms to sell to people! So guess what I brought back
as souvenirs for our class?” (take answers) “You guys are too smart- I brought back
some flowers to put in our classroom and some vegetables that we can cut up and taste
during snack time today!”
 “So I was thinking, how cool would it be if we could grow our own vegetables and
flowers right here at school? We could plant all types of things, take care of them, and
watch them grow! We would have to build some raised garden beds first which look
like this: (show picture on screen)
  “We would plant the seeds for our crops in the raised garden beds and our seeds would
grow into things like vegetables and flowers! The only thing is that without these raised
garden beds, we can’t grow all these cool plants and right now, we don’t have any raised
garden beds at our school. There is this one way that I thought of that might be a way for
us to get these raised garden beds though. Do you want to hear it? I thought if we write
really great persuasive letters to our School Board, they might be willing to help us! Do
you think you can do that? Great! Let’s do this!”

Procedures
 ELA Connection: Students will individually draft a persuasive letter to the school
board to convince them to build Raised Garden Beds at school. *After this day’s
lesson, the letters will go through the process of editing/rewriting, and final drafts will
be created and sent to the school board.*
 Once raised garden beds are ready for use, present students with essential question:
how do plants grow?
 Students will be broken up into teams of 4 and allowed to choose a plant that their
group would like to grow.
 Students will be assigned an area of the raised garden beds and will get to work with
their Plant Caretaker Team.
 On Day One, the students will plant the seeds of their chosen plant.
 Each day after, the students will water and care for their plant.
 Plant Caretaker Teams will keep one daily plant journal per group and in it include
o A sentence or two of what they did to care for their plant each day
o observations
o predictions
o Measurements of leaves, stem, height of plant, etc.
o Inferences
o Drawings/diagrams
 While students are working, teacher will travel from group to group observing their
investigation/inquiry.
 Teacher will ask groups questions promoting science inquiry such as what did you
observe today?, how has the crop changed over time, what have you measured on your
crop? How much longer do you think it will take for _______ to happen (sprout
leaves, grow to 2 inches tall, etc.), tell me about what you are writing in your plant
journal, how has your plant grown so far?, etc.
 Once a group’s crop is ready to harvest, the students will share with their classmates
how their pant grew with the information from their journals (observations, how they
cared for it, measurements, drawings, etc.) Students can share their journal under a
document camera and project it to the screen and talk about it with the class.
  The harvested crops will be prepared (cut, cooked, etc.) by the Plant Caretaker Team
and shared with the class either to eat during snack time or displayed in the classroom
(in the case of flowers).

Differentiation
 Students with significant ELA deficits will be given the opportunity to create a
poster with information and pictures to persuade the school board to build raised
garden beds at school.
 Students with exceptional ELA strengths will be given the opportunity to create an
oral presentation to give the school board to persuade them to build raised garden beds
at school.

Closure
 Students will throw around a beach ball with questions written on it and answer
whichever one their right thumb lands on. Questions include:
o How did your Plant Caretaker Team work cooperatively?
o What was easy about working on a Plant Caretaker Team?
o What was hard about working on a Plant Caretaker Team?
o What did you learn about working on a team?
o What did you learn about how plants grow?
o How did your plant grow?
o How did you care for your plant?
o How did your plant change over time?
o What did you include in your plant journal?

Assessment of Student Performance

(Used for formative assessment)

Science Inquiry/Interpersonal Skills Rubric:
1- Does Not Meet
Expectations
Science Observations offer
Inquiry little insight, details are
Experience missing from journal.
The student does engage
effective science process
skills.
2- Meets 3- Exceeds
Expectations Expectations
Student conveys Student
new knowledge demonstrates
built through exceptional focus
investigation. on the science
Observations are inquiry processes.
accurate with Observations reveal
important details connections the
conveyed through student makes to
notes, drawings, prior investigations.
measurements, and Observations in the
 conversations. form of notes,
Student is able to drawings,
demonstrate critical measurements, are
thinking and highly detailed.
reflection skills. The student is able
to share insightful
conversation about
the investigation.
Group Student is frequently off- Student participates Student
Interpersona task, may be fully in the group exhibits exceptiona
l Skills argumentative with team tasks. The student l
members. Listening, demonstrates interpersonal skills
problem solving, verbal appropriate and is skillful in
and non verbal skills do interaction through elevating the
not match expected successful listening, performance of
outcomes needed to be a problem solving other group
successful group and use of members.
member. negotiating. The Leadership skills
student supports the convey respect for
group’s direction others while
and focus. keeping the group
well focused on the
essential task.

ELA Connection Rubric:

(drafts will be placed in writing portfolio)
1- Does not meet 2- Meets 3- Exceeds
Expectations Expectations Expectations
Content Provides 0-1 Provides 2 supporting Provides 3
supporting arguments arguments that the supporting
why the raised garden raised garden beds arguments that
beds should be built should be built the raised
garden beds
should be built
Organization No organization is Writing includes one Has
present or two types of introductory,
paragraphs- either supporting, and
introductory, concluding
supporting, and/or paragraphs
concluding paragraphs
Focus Writing does not have Writing has a clear Writing has a
a clear focus or has a focus with unclear clear focus with
clear focus but does supporting details supporting
not relate to topic details
Style Writer’s opinions and Writer’s opinions and Writer’s
thoughts are not thoughts are opinions and
 clear/consistent sometimes clear thoughts are
clear
Conventions Many errors, they some errors, but they Few or no
interfere with the do not interfere with errors
meaning/understandin the
g of the writing meaning/understandin
g of the writing

Materials
 Raised garden beds with soil
 Seeds
 Water/watering cans
 Trowels
 Journals
 Pencils
 Rulers
 Magnifying glasses
 Document camera

Technology
 Screen/projector to show photo of raised garden beds
 Raised Garden Bed photo link: http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/cm/15/06/54cfbdbf39b74_-
_raised-beds-01-0409-de.jpg
 Document camera

Reflection on Planning
 A positive aspect of my lesson plan design is that it is allows for student choice. The
students are able to choose which vegetable or flower they want to grow, which is
important because they can choose what they are interested in. If they were forced to all
plant the same thing, some students would not be as interested and invested in the
experience. The choice allows them to have more ownership and increases motivation to
care for the plant. Also, because each group will most likely grow a different plant, the
students get a chance to see how several plants grow and compare and contrast. Another
positive aspect is that differentiation is also built into the Science Inquiry experience part
of the lesson. Because students are working in Plant Groups, they can get help from their
classmates specifically in their groups. There is also only one journal kept per group
which they all collaborate on, so if there is an area that a specific child has difficulty with,
another child can step in and assist them in that area.
 Some goals regarding areas of the lesson that I’d like to develop would be to create more
connections to ELA and math. For another ELA connection, I thought that the students
could create a PowerPoint, poster, or oral presentation with the information from their
journal and then present it to parents, other students at the school, or even the school
board as a way to thank them and show what they accomplished. As for a math
connection, I think that it would be great to create either a line graph charting the plants’
growth over time or a bar graph to compare the height, number of leaves, etc. of all of the
types of plants the groups planted.