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Topic: 5B Life cycles
French chefs have come up with 11 tasty dishes that could be grown, cooked and served on a Martian base. These dishes are important because astronauts who arrive on Mars have now got to be self-sufficient. Oxygen, food and water will need to be produced on Mars, because if reserves from Earth were taken with them, the rocket would never get off the launch pad. This task challenges the children to explore the conditions for plant growth, germination and pollination by designing investigations and exploring life cycles.
An Upd8 task designed for CCEA (Northern Ireland) in line with the Revised Curriculum requirements for the World Around Us and Thinking Skills & Personal Capabilities.
You will need Acrobat
Reader installed to open the activity sheets.
You will also need the latest version of the flash player to be able to play swf files.
· To plan the various stages of a whole investigation
Children will demonstrate this by completing the task on Page 2 successfully
· To apply knowledge of plant growth and life cycles
Children will demonstrate this by completing the task on Page 4 successfully.
Science:
Unit 5B: Life cycles
· the life processes common to plants include growth, nutrition and reproduction
· the effect of light, air, water and temperature on plant growth
· about the parts of the flower and their role in the life cycle of flowering plants, including pollination, seed formation, seed dispersal and germination.
Scientific enquiry
Ideas and evidence
· Describe how experimental evidence and creative thinking have combined to provide a scientific explanation
· Support a prediction with evidence
· Begin to identify whether given conclusions are sufficiently supported by evidence
Investigative skills
· Ask questions that can be investigated scientifically
· Consider what sources of information will be used to answer questions
· Predict what might happen when planning what to do, what evidence to collect etc.
· Make tests fair
· Review own work and work of others and describe its significance and limitations
Introducing the activity
· Display page 1 through a projector or as an OHT. The problem is that astronauts need food and if they are to travel to Mars and live there - how will they survive? Ask the children to consider each of the possibilities pictured. Discuss which of the three options displayed might be the most practical. Allow the children to explore all the reasons until they come to realize that growing plants is the only real possibility. Why wouldn't the others work? Animals wouldn't survive plus would be difficult to transport, canned and dried goods would be consumed quickly and couldn't be replaced etc.
Leading the main activity
· Display the planning cycle on page 2 through a projector or as an OHT. Explain that this takes them through the stages of planning an investigation to answer the question “How will plants grow on Mars?”. Ask the children to think about plant growth and ask the questions:
- How could the amount of light affect plant growth?
- What other factors could affect how well plants grow?
(Tip: present the question and make a list of the various factors on a whiteboard.)
Discuss whether plants could be grown in artificial sunlight or in the Mars daylight.
· Display page 3 through a projector or as an OHT. Print off copies for the children as appropriate. The fact file and quote can be used as a stimulus for discussion of the growing environment on Mars. Emphasise the idea that the astronauts would need to grow plants for food.
Challenge the children to work through the planning cycle. This could be organised by asking the children to produce written plans, either individually or in groups, or by working through the plan as a discussion activity, giving the children time to consider each stage and then taking feedback. Encourage the children to justify their predictions, explain how they would set up a fair test and collect suitable results. Children could be invited to present their revised plans to the rest of the class.
· Display page 4 through a projector or as an OHT. Discuss with the children the stages in a plant lifecycle. Emphasise the conditions that would be needed for seeds to germinate and for the small plants to grow well. If appropriate, discuss ways in which pollen can be transferred between plants. Challenge the children working in groups to discuss and explain how the conditions on Mars might affect plant growth and how the problems might be overcome. The children could use the Mars Fact File on page 3 to get some information about the conditions on Mars. Split the class into three groups: germination, growth and pollination. Ask each group to prepare a presentation for the rest of the class on the problems for each growth stage. Encourage each member of the group to take an active part. One method could be by one child asking the question and another supplying the answer. E.g. What if the atmosphere on Mars means that insects cannot live - how can the plants pollinate? Maybe the astronauts will have to find ways of pollinating plants themselves, perhaps using fine brushes.
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