Plants in Our Lawn

Students will learn about some of the plants that live in lawns using the story booklet "Plants in a Lawn" as a model. They will plan how to test this idea by picking leaves of different plants from their school lawn. They will compare their list of plants with the story list to see if they are different and suggest why they might be different. They will communicate their results in a poster

Driving Question - Are the plants in our school lawn the same as in the story?

Disciplinary Core Idea (DCI) K-ESS3.A Natural Resources - Living things need water, air, and resources from the land, and they live in places that have the things they need. Example: grasses need sunlight so they often grow in meadows - or lawns!)
Demonstration of Understanding K-ESS3#1 Use a model to represent the relationship between the needs of different plants and animals (including humans) and the places they live.
Science and Engineering Practices (SEP) Developing and Using Models. Use a model (diagram, drawing, etc.) to represent relationships in the real world.
Cross Cutting Concept (CCC)
Systems and System Models - Systems in the natural and designed world have parts that work together.

This lesson has 6 parts - Each part (except 4) is intended to take about 20 minutes, though time will vary with student skills and readiness. If it takes two or three periods to work through all the activities in a part, that is ok. If some sections don't take all the time allotted, it is ok to move along to the next part or spend time reviewing or practicing writing and illustrating vocabulary words.

1. Get Ready. Students share what they already know about lawns and learn about some words in the story booklet.
2. Ask Questions. Students listen to "Plants in a Lawn "and answer and ask questions about it. With help, they develop a research question: "Are the plants in our school lawn the same as in the story?
3. Make a Plan. Students, with help, make a plan for investigating the research question by answering How, When, Where and Who questions.
4. Investigate. Students carry out their plan. In part 4.1 they collect leaves. In part 4.2 they sort leaves from all the different plants they found. They summarize their results.
5. Make Sense of Results. Students compare the list of leaves from the story booklet with what they found. They decide if the lists are the same, a little different, or very different, and what that means. They learn about systems.
6. Share Results. Students create and share posters of their results and what they mean.

Contents: Lesson pp. 2-7; Alignments, List of Printables, List of PDFs, Readability, p 8; Print

Supplies and Equipment: plastic bags, a sheet or tarp, printable signs and blank paper, story booklet (color and bw versions), poster blank, cut outs and blank paper. Optional, pennies to demonstrate scale, newsprint for drying and preserving leaves (flatten leaves between papers, put heavy books on top, keep in dry place 7 days).

Plants in Our Lawn

Young Bird Books