Plants | Lesson 1 - Pretest and Expressing Ideas

Download PDF of Lesson 1 Teacher's Guide

In this lesson, students take a pretest and share their initial ideas about plant growth, identifying what plants need to grow and gain mass.

Guiding Question

How does a plant grow?

Activities in this Lesson

Activity 1.1: Plants Unit Pretest (20 min)
Activity 1.2: Expressing Ideas about How Plants Grow (30 min)

Unit Map

Plants Lesson 1 Unit Map

Target Performances

Lesson 1 – Pretest and Expressing Ideas (students as questioners)
Activity 1.1: Plants Unit Pretest	Students show their initial proficiencies for the overall unit goal: Questioning, investigating, and explaining how matter and energy move and change as plants live, move, and grow.
Activity 1.2: Expressing Ideas and Questions about How Plants Grow	Students ask and record specific questions about changes in matter and energy in response to the unit driving question: How do you think that a plant grows, moves, and functions?

NGSS Performance Expectations

This lesson helps students start thinking about all of the unit NGSS Performance Expectations, but does not feature a mastery of any of them.

Three-dimensional Learning Progression

The pretest and discussion in this lesson (a) help students to anticipate and begin thinking about the questions that they will answer in this lesson and (b) help you as a teacher see how your students reason about matter, energy and the carbon-transforming processes of photosynthesis, cellular respiration, and biosynthesis. In the Application activity Sequence, both Activity 1.1 and Activity 1.2 in this lesson serve as the “Establish the Problem” phase for all the activities in the Plants Unit.

Key Ideas and Practices for Each Activity

In Activity 1.1, the unit pretest is useful for two purposes. Your students’ responses will help you decide how much detail you want to include during the unit, particularly details about chemical structures of materials. If your students are mostly at Level 2 in the carbon learning progression, you may want to focus on the main ideas (like the tracing of matter and energy and the Three Questions) rather than chemical structures. Your students’ responses will also provide a starting point for discussions about the focus for this unit.

In Activity 1.2, through the discussion students will come to recognize that they have many different ideas about what how they think plants grow, as well as unanswered questions. We expect many students to express Level 2 or Level 3 ideas, for example, that plants grow because soil minerals coming into the plant through the roots provide energy for plant growth. Though most students will know that plants need light and that light is absorbed by the leaves, even students who know the word “photosynthesis” are likely to be vague about what happens during photosynthesis, particularly that photosynthesis enables plants to use CO₂ as a carbon source for storing chemical energy and building plant tissues.

Key Carbon-Transforming Processes: Photosynthesis, Cellular Respiration, & Biosynthesis

Content Boundaries and Extensions

Talk and Writing

At this stage in the unit, the students will be Expressing Ideas. The table below shows specific talk and writing goals for this phase of the unit.

Talk and Writing Goals for Expressing Ideas Phase	Teacher Talk Strategies that Support this Goal	Curriculum Components that Support this Goal
Treat this as brainstorming and elicitation.	Remember, there are no “right” answers at this point. We want to hear all ideas.	Unit Pretest My Students’ Answers
Listen for ideas about what is happening to matter and energy at different scales.	Where did the energy come from? Where does the matter go next? Are you talking about matter or energy? What about the atomic-molecular scale? What about the cellular scale?	Unit Pretest Expressing Ideas and Questions Process Tool
Listen for a wide range of student ideas. Press for more complete ideas.	Who can add to that? What do you mean by _____? Say more. So I think you said _____. Is that right?
Have students compare, contrast, and document their ideas.	Who has a different idea? How are those ideas similar/different? Who can rephrase ________’s idea? Let’s record our ideas so we can come back to them and see how our ideas change.	Sticky notes on the class poster Activity 1.2 Presentation
Encourage students to provide evidence for their ideas.	How do you know that? What have you seen in the world that makes you think that?	Sticky notes on the class poster.