Garden Lessons: Plant Parts- Part 3: STEMS! (3rd Grade)

 
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Grade(s): 3rd

Lesson Objective(s): Students learn all about stems and their function in the plant

Ohio Curriculum Standard: Individuals of the same kind differ in their traits and sometimes the differences give individuals an advantage in surviving and reproducing; Organisms have different structures and behaviors that serve different functions.

Supplies Needed

  • “Plant Parts” Workbooks

  • Plants coloring pages

  • scissors

  • glue

  • Pencils

  • plates

  • Celery & Asparagus (1 bunch of each)

  • Knife, cutting board

  • Poster of Plant Parts (label as go along)

  • hand sanitizer

  • Harmonica


Introduction (5 mins):

  • Get out Plant Parts workbooks. Review: What plant part did we learn about last week? What does that plant part DO?

    • Using students’ explanation, write class description of “ROOTS” on poster

  • the next part of the plant we’ll be learning about is STEMS

Activity (20 mins):

  • Students read paragraph about stems along with teacher

    • Give students a few minutes to do the fill-in-the-blank part of the booklet

    • ask after: what would happen if we cut off the stem of the plant? What might happen if the stem gets damaged?

  • Everyone gets slices of celery & asparagus, and the teacher shows what whole celery & whole asparagus looks like, too

  • In the venn diagram section of their workbooks, label one side “celery” and the other “asparagus”

    • Have students work in their table groups on making a venn diagram for the stems

      • some ideas for compare/contrast: size, texture, shape, color, taste, type of vegetable, etc.

  • Once their venn Diagram has at least 2 things in each of the three categories, they are welcome to try the snack: asparagus & celery!

  • Finally, what other STEM vegetables do we eat or use?

    • Students can cut out examples from their coloring pages & color them (maybe go through the items as a class first, circling the items we need to cut out for the “roots” section)

    • encourage them to think of other stems we eat- draw them in the workbook!