The following reading collections are free with registration at Readworks.
This collection of readings is all about insects and other animals that pollinate plants! Review the process of pollination and discover even more about pollinators! (Grade 2)
This collection of readings is all about the interactions between organisms and their environments. Students will explore what an ecologist is and review the relationships between bees and flowering plants! (Grade 3)
Both reading sets also include challenge articles to help differentiate for your students.
If your students would like to continue playing the game from this lesson, we have created an additional set of Plant Cards. Print out one set of additional cards for each pair of students. Then, cut out the cards and shuffle them into the deck. The rules and pollinators will all remain the same as the original game.
This activity from Smithsonian Education invites students to consider the adaptations flowers have developed that support pollination. Students match a particular flower’s adaptations with a particular pollinator. They also consider their own personal preferences (e.g. favorite colors and scents) and imagine what kind of flower they would want to pollinate.
In this lesson, students focused on how plant life cycles depend on pollinators, but is it also the other way around? Do pollinator life cycles depend on plants? The Mystery Science Mini-Lesson “How do bees make honey?” extends the concept that the life cycles of plants and the life cycles of pollinators are intricately connected.
In this lesson, students discover that while there is great diversity among flowering plants, they all share similar life cycles. They all start from seeds, grow, and eventually reproduce through the process of pollination. In the activity, Future Flowers, students observe and predict how changes to the pollinators affect plant reproduction, which affects the life cycles of those plants.
Preview activityFuture Flowers Rules Sheet printout | Print 15 copies |
My Tiny Garden printout | Print 30 copies |
Plant Cards & Card Station printout | Print 15 copies |
Score Sheets & Bee Cards printout | Print 15 copies |
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We suggest students work in pairs. Homeschool students will need a partner to play the game.
All the plants in the activity game are annuals, which means they die every winter and must be replanted every year from seed. We do not discuss annual versus perennial plant life cycles in this particular lesson.
In the extensions, we have another set of Plant Cards with different annual garden plants. Check out the Extensions for further instructions.
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