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Meet the Micro:bits
Coding is easy and fun when students meet the micro:bits. Learn to write and download code, so you are ready to create your own scientific tools!
Meet the Micro:bits
Coding is easy and fun when students meet the micro:bits. Learn to write and download code, so you are ready to create your own scientific tools!
Student Edition
(English/Spanish)
Student Edition
(English/Spanish)
Student Edition
(English/Spanish)
California Wildfires
Watch Class Movie
teacher Prep
Lab sheet & activites
Watch Class Movie
Class Movie
Teacher Prep Movie
Lab Materials Needed
Blockey Koa Crate
from Kea STEMCrate
- 1 Springy Spring Scale per student
Student Lab Sheet
Class Movie
The Parts of a Flower: Pollination in Flowering Plants
Student Edition
(English/Spanish)
Teacher Edition
(English/Spanish)
From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes MS-LS1-4:
Use argument based on empirical evidence and scientific reasoning to support an explanation for how characteristic animal behaviors and specialized plant structures affect the probability of successful reproduction of animals and plants respectively. [Clarification Statement: Examples of behaviors that affect the probability of animal reproduction could include nest building to protect young from cold, herding of animals to protect young from predators, and vocalization of animals and colorful plumage to attract mates for breeding. Examples of animal behaviors that affect the probability of plant reproduction could include transferring pollen or seeds, and creating conditions for seed germination and growth. Examples of plant structures could include bright flowers attracting butterflies that transfer pollen, flower nectar and odors that attract insects that transfer pollen, and hard shells on nuts that squirrels bury.]
From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes MS-LS3-2:
Develop and use a model to describe why asexual reproduction results in offspring with identical genetic information and sexual reproduction results in offspring with genetic variation. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on using models such as Punnett squares, diagrams, and simulations to describe the cause and effect relationship of gene transmission from parent(s) to offspring and resulting genetic variation.]
Pacing Guide:
Color Key: Green words- Hands-on Activity Black words- Book reading Blue words: Revisit the Phenomenon
Instruction day 1 (pages ): Explore the Phenomenon
Summary: Watch a video and experiment.
Lesson Objective: Students observe the structure of flowers under the microscope and get excited to learn more!
Introduction: Show students this movie to introduce what they’ll be observing and learning about.
Lab Resources
Instructions: Before class begins, make sure to bring plenty of fresh flowers along and to get out the Meeka Microscopes. Each student should have their own microscope and should try setting it up and getting the flower in focus on their own. Remind students to examine the flowers with their bare eyes first!
Allow students to explore freely with the microscopes—they’ll do a more structured exploration of the parts of flowers they’re looking at later in the chapter.
Guiding Questions:
Ask: What did the different flowers you looked at seem to have in common? What was unique?
Example: They have different colors and petal shapes, but they all had pollen in the middle.
Ask: Does anything look different than you expected up close?
Example: I didn’t think there would be so much texture and detail on the parts in the middle of the flower!
Wrap-up: When you’re putting away the microscopes, teach students how to turn any leftover flowers into a beautiful gift that won’t wilt to give to their parents, siblings or friends. They simply put the flower between the pages of a notebook (or a textbook, sandwiched by a piece of printer paper) that can be kept shut tight for a few weeks. It will work even better if there is some extra weight on top of the book/notebook!
Instruction day 2 (pages 178 - 180): Meet the author, solve the riddle
Summary: Meet the author and solve the riddle!
Lesson Objective: Students are introduced to the article and what it is about. Students learn about the scientist who contributed to this article and her research interests.
Introduction: We’re starting a new article, so let’s look at the cover on page 178. What do you notice about the image? What is the title of the article?
Instructions: Read about scientist/author Beth Hunter and watch the video of her introducing herself. Then, read the riddle aloud, and instruct students to write their answers before speaking them. Students discuss their best answer with a neighbor. Students will raise their hands to share their answers with the class and why they chose that answer. Reveal answer to “unlock” the chapter.
Instruction day 3 (pages 181 - 182): Read, draw, and discuss
Summary: Read, discuss and watch a video.
Lesson Objective: Outline the relationship between flowering plants and pollinators.
Introduction: We’re going to learn a lot about flowers and how clever their designs actually are in the next couple of weeks. To get warmed up, ask students to think for themselves for a moment then discuss in pairs: what foods that we eat would still exist if all flowering plants disappeared from the planet? Once they’ve had a chance to brainstorm, tell them you’ll revisit the question shortly!
Instructions: Read the introductory pages on pollination in flowering plants as a class, then watch this video clip (from 0:19-2:43) about how bees use ultraviolet vision and electric fields to find flowers!
Guiding Questions:
Ask: Do you think pollination would happen if a bee spent all day visiting flowers of different species?
Example: The flowers would not be pollinated, because they need pollen from the same species of flower (i.e., you can’t pollinate an apple blossom with pollen from an orange blossom.)
Wrap-up: See what ideas students came up with to the introduction question. The things that we eat would look very different without flowering plants! For example, all fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts come from flowering plants (mushrooms are an exception). And most cows in the United States eat corn or grass, which are both types of flowering plants! So it might be very tricky to find milk, cheese, yogurt or beef.
Instruction day 4 (pages 183 - 186): Read and discuss and watch videos.
Summary: Read, discuss and watch videos.
Lesson Objective: Understand why plants pollinate and the structure of pollen; describe the different parts of a flower and their roles in pollination.
Introduction: Before you begin class, pull up these magnified images of pollen at the front of the class. If possible, do so in a way that only shows students the image, and not the caption or surrounding website, and ask them for guesses about what you’re showing them pictures of as you scroll through pollen from different species.
Instructions: Read “Pollen Contains Genetic Information” and “Pollen Can Stick to Insects and Animals” as a class, discussing as you go. Show the class this video of a bumblebee in slow motion as it flies between flowers. Do your students see the pollen clinging to the bumblebee’s body?
Continue reading “Pollination Allows Plants to Reproduce” and “Meet the Parts of a Flower.” Then, watch part of this video clip (starting from 1:18) about a pollinator that may surprise some students: wasps! You can end at 2:19, or watch to the end of the video clip (about one more minute) if students are enjoying the video.
Guiding Questions:
Ask: Up close, does the shape of any of the grains of pollen remind you of anything?
Example: Students can say anything that comes to mind for them! Some might notice that the pollen looks a bit like the seeds that some plants produce, like burs, and that the function of that design is very similar—sticking to an animal for transportation.
Ask: Many flowers close their petals up at night. Why might they do that?
Example: The pollinators for those species must only come out during the day, so the flowers are protecting the valuable parts inside the petals that they need to reproduce.
Wrap-up: We’re going to look at some flowers under microscopes again soon. When we do, see how close you can zoom in on the pollen and if you can identify the individual grains.
Instruction day 5 (pages 187 - 188): Read and discuss
Summary: Read and discuss.
Lesson Objective: Identify the purpose of pollination as a form of sexual reproduction that mixes genes within a species.
Introduction: To get a sense of the amazing diversity of flowering plants right where you live, direct students to search for your school’s address on iNaturalist.org and select the filter with an image of a leaf on it (so the map only displays plants.) Ask students to find a flowering plant within a mile of their school. Do they recognize it? What is it called? Challenge them to see if they can spot any of them in real life in the next week.
Guiding Questions:
Ask: We can notice eye color, hair color, and height as common examples of traits that humans inherit from their parents in their genes. What kinds of traits might be different between flowering plants of the same species?
Example: They might look different by growing to different sizes or having variations in color. They might also need different amounts of water or sun to be healthy, respond differently to stress or die earlier or later. (Guide students towards some of these latter answers if the only ones they’re coming up with are based on the plants’ appearance!)
Ask: If you were a farmer, would you want diverse plants with lots of gene mixing, or very similar plants? Why?
Example: Students might say that they’d want diverse plants so they are more protected from diseases and disasters. Others might point out that it’s easier for farmers to harvest and sell produce that looks and grows similarly to all the other plants.
Wrap-up: Read an excerpt from this Scientific American article (the article’s first three paragraphs):
Like his parents and grandparents before them, Edilberto “Beto” García Cuenca started farming the land when he was just a kid. The descendant of a long lineage of “campesinos”—a Spanish term for family farmer—he still grows maize in the small, five-acre plot his mom left him in their hometown of Santa María Zacatepec in the Mexican state of Puebla. He also plants beans to keep the soil fertile and relies on rain to irrigate his crops.
During the rainy season, García Cuenca selects the seeds he stored the previous cycle, plants them, and cares for the seedlings. Multiply that process by the millions of other Campesinos in Mexico and you get billions of genetically different maize plants—each exposed to a wide diversity of environments and subjected to unique selection practices.
This evolutionary experiment has been going on for thousands of years. And the efforts of small-scale farmers, a recent study suggests, generate the bulk of corn’s genetic diversity in North America. In the face of more aggressive weather threats, researchers say the finding comes at a critical time. “This takes things a step further,” says Daniel Piñero, a plant population geneticist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “Family farmers are not only preserving the [genetic] diversity of maize,” or corn, Piñero says—they are contributing more of it.
Instruction day 6 (pages 189 - 190): Read and discuss
Summary: Read, discuss and watch a video.
Lesson Objective: Explain how most flowers prevent self-pollination and why it matters.
Introduction: Ask students to open to the page with the diagram of a flower’s parts, and ask them: since an individual flower has both ovules AND pollen, could a flower pollinate itself? Give students a moment to think, then solicit a few answers.
Instructions: Read “Most Flowers Cannot Self-Pollinate” and “Sunflowers Can Self-Pollinate.” Then, watch this video about the importance of pollinating between different plants for growing almonds. You can stop at 4:35 unless students seem very interested in finishing it.
Instruction day 7 (pages 191 - 194): Read and discuss and watch a video.
Summary: Read, discuss and watch a video.
Lesson Objective: Practice applying the chapter concepts with an interesting example of a pollination strategy!
Introduction: If you were a pollinator, like a bug, bat or bird, what smell would do the best job of attracting you? You can ask students to share their answers with a partner, or pose the question directly to the class. They can be creative (fresh-baked cookies, the smell of a swimming pool, etc.) Then, ask the students if any of them said rotting meat!
Instructions: Read “The Big Stinker” through “I Am Not Made of Just One Flower,” discussing as you go.
Guiding Questions:
Ask: What kinds of animals would help pollinate a corpse flower? Which ones would you not expect to pollinate one?
Example: Bugs like flies that like dead stuff would maybe help pollinate it, but animals that like sweet flowers wouldn’t.
Wrap-up: Watch this video clip of people reacting to a blooming corpse flower up close!
Instruction day 8 (pages 195 - 197): Read, discuss and watch a video.
Summary: Read, discuss and watch a video.
Lesson Objective: Identify the corpse flower’s pollination structures and how it reproduces.
Introduction: We’re going to keep learning about the corpse flower today—what are the most interesting things folks remember learning about it? Share with a neighbor and then (optionally) with the whole class.
Instructions: Pull up this time lapse video of Alice the corpse flower blooming in captivity in Chicago for the class. You can play it as a student begins reading “Corpse Flower Pollination” out loud, since the video doesn’t have any voiceover and since the flower doesn’t do much for the first minute. Students will likely want to focus on the video more around 1:16, when the corpse flower suddenly begins to bloom. This particular corpse flower grew for 11 years before opening—and it only bloomed for 24 hours!
Guiding Questions:
Ask: Why might it make sense for the corpse flower structure to actually be made of hundreds of little flowers?
Example: If the plant is putting that much time and energy into getting pollinated, it might be safer to have hundreds of flowers instead of counting on just one!
Ask: Do you think the new baby corpse flowers will grow close to their parent plants, or far away? Why?
Example: I think they might grow far away because birds and rhinos could wander pretty far before dropping or popping out the fruits.
Wrap-up: If you’d like, please bring some flowers to class with you tomorrow!
Instruction day 9 (pages 198 - 201): Review and dissect.
Summary: Review and dissect.
Lesson Objective: Review and contextualize the material students have learned.
Introduction: We get to use Meeka Microscope again today! Now that you know so much about flowers and pollination, we’ll be paying really close attention to what all the parts are as we examine them. Let’s look at what kinds of flowers you all brought! (If students don’t know, try using the app Seek to identify them!)
Instructions: Give students some quiet time to write down their interesting facts about vocab words on page 195. Once they've finished, they can find a partner to share their answers with. Then, students will observe flowers under the Meeka Microscope again, but this time with the goal of identifying the various parts by the names you've learned. Students use this lab sheet and follow the instructions on pages 199 and 200.
Guiding Questions:
Ask: Did you notice anything new or different this time compared with what you saw before?
Example: Yes, I paid much closer attention to the stamen and noticed how it must stick up to help pollinators find it.
Ask: Were any parts hard to identify or different than how the diagram showed them?
Example: Answers will vary depending on the flowers they’re looking at. Remind students that all the variation between different kinds of flowers helps each of them thrive in their own way in nature!
Instruction day 10 (pages 202 - 203): Review and Reflect
Summary: Review and reflect.
Lesson Objective: Students synthesize and review the concepts they’ve learned.
Introduction: Wow, we already finished the chapter about flowers and pollination! In pairs, share with your classmate what you learned that you’d most want to share with another adult in your life (like a parent or grandparent), and what you learned that you’d most want to keep learning more about.
Instructions: Then, ask students to observe flowers under the Meeka Microscopes again, but this time with the goal of identifying the various parts by the names you’ve learned. Students should use this lab sheet and follow the instructions on pa.
Wrap-up: If students made any pressed flowers at the beginning of the unit, remind them to open up the book they pressed it in and see how it turned out!
Instruction day 11: Evaluate
Google Forms Quiz: Teachers can access what students understand through this google forms quiz.
Click the link to copy this google form into your personal Google classroom.
Click the link to copy this form into your Google classroom.
*No password is required for the quiz*