Subject: Plants around us

Author: Zyta Sendecka

Target group

4th grade student of elementary school.

Core curriculum

Lesson objective

Students recognize and name common plants occurring in their surroundings.

The criteria for success

• you will identify four common tree species;

• you will identify four common meadow plant species.

Key competences

• communication in the mother tongue;

• communication in foreign languages;

• mathematical competence and basis competences in science and technology; 

• digital competence;

• learning to learn;

• social and civic competences.

Methods/forms of work

Working with text, observation.

Individual activity, activity in pairs and activity in groups.

Teaching aids

• abstract;

• tablets/computers;

• interactive whiteboard or traditional blackboard;

• birch, lime, oak and beech leaves;

• pine, spruce and larch twigs with needles;

• hard pads with clip.

Lesson plan overview

Introduction

1. The teacher asks the students to name principles to be followed by nature observers the learned during previous lessons.

2. The teacher specifies the subject, the lesson objectives in a language the student understands, and the criteria for success.

Realization

1. The students, in the form of an individual activity, read the passage from the abstract entitled “What do trees and shrubs look like?”. They discuss the differences between a tree and a shrub.

2. The teacher divides the students into groups. Each team receives a set of leaves (birch, lime, oak, beech) and twigs (pine, spruce, larch with needles). The students are to compare those leaves and twigs with the illustrations in „Gallery 1” and to name the trees from which they originated.

3. Students do interactive exercise no. 1 in the form of an individual activity.

4. The teacher, using “Gallery 3”, introduces common meadow plants to the students.

5. The teacher reminds safety rules to be followed by the students during lessons taking place outside the school building.

6. The students explain the principles of biological observation.

7. The students attend field classes near the school. In the form of an individual activity, each student observes the plants growing in this area. They note the identified species down in the notebook and describe them.

8. In pairs, the students compare the results of their observations.

9. The teacher asks volunteer students to give the names of the meadow plants they identified. The teacher also asks the students to give the number of deciduous and conifer trees species growing in the area.

10. Students do interactive exercise no. 2 in the form of an individual activity.

Summary

1. Round of summary sentences. Selected students finish the sentence initiated by the teacher:

“After today's lesson I can...”.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

Plants around us

Trees are the most magnificent plants in our environment. They usually have a single, thick, bark‑covered trunk, which at a certain height starts to branch out, forming boughs. These in turn divide into thinner and thinner branches. Boughs and branches form a tree crown. Roots, which are usually not visible on the surface, hold the entire plant in the ground.

The trees differ in leaf structure. On this basis they are divided into deciduous and coniferous. The former usually have wide and flat leaves. They can have various shapes: similar to the heart as in a lime tree, ovoid as in a beech tree, or composed of small leaves as in a chestnut tree. The leaves of the conifers are thin and elongated. They are called needles or acerate leaves.

Shrubs differ from trees in that they are lower and do not have a clearly visible trunk. Forsythia is a common shrub in our environment. What is distinguishable about them is that they bloom early in the spring, before they even form leaves. Another common shrub is lilac. Some coniferous plants, such as yews and junipers, are also shrubs.

Trees can grow individually, in groups (e.g. avenues of trees in parks, clusters of trees in fields), or together with shrubs and herbaceous plants they can form very large clusters called forests. Forests where only deciduous trees grow are called deciduous forests. Only coniferous trees grow in coniferous forests, also called pine forests. Mixed forests are the ones in which both coniferous and deciduous trees grow.

Unlike trees and shrubs, plants that do not have woody stems are herbaceous. Some of them, like trees and shrubs, are perennial. These include, among others, common dandelion, rabbitfoot clover and horsetail. We already know that there are also biennials, i.e. a plant that takes two years to complete its biological lifecycle. These include, among others, pansy, chrysanthemum and wood forget‑me‑not. Annual plants include chamomile and cornflower common to cereal crop groups. Among the crops, annual crops includes all cereals, rapeseed and sunflower.

The herbaceous plants can grow in clusters called meadows. There are no trees or shrubs in the meadows. They are made up mainly of grasses and colourful plants such as clover. Meadows are the habitat of numerous insects, birds and mammals. Sometimes some forest animals, such as roe deer, also look for food there. Natural meadows are rare in Poland. Most of them were created by felling forests and are kept by grazing animals, mowing and removing young trees.

• Plants growing in the immediate vicinity of the human can be divided into trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants.

• Trees can be divided into deciduous and coniferous trees.

• There are three basic types of forests: deciduous, coniferous and mixed.

• Herbaceous plants are divided into annual plants, biennial plants and perennial plants.