Student Pages
Teacher Pages
Additional Resources
Key Vocabulary: Power Plants, Answer Key
Key Vocabulary: Power Plants
Measuring Plant Growth
What Happens if Plants Don’t Get Sunlight, Water, or Soil?
Planning Your Power Plants Investigation
Plant Producers
Power Plants — Tools
Power Plants — Enrich
Option 1: Read aloud Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life by Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm (in the Additional Resources). Invite students to write down three to five key points from the reading, and use them to make a diagram or illustration that might serve as the cover of the book.
Option 2: Invite students to start seeds for planting in the school garden, using the best techniques they learned from the activity.
Option 3: Create models explaining the role of leaves in photosynthesis. See the 3D Tree Leaf Model from Kessler Science as an example.
Option 4: Ask students to compare how much oxygen an “average” person needs with the amount an “average” tree produces. (An average person uses approximately 1.05 pounds (0.39 kg) of oxygen each day, while an average tree releases about 0.06 pounds (0.02 kg) per day.)
Option 5: Arrange a visit to a nursery or orchard to see trees in various stages of growth and to find out about the needs of different trees.
Option 6: Have students select a tree suitable for the school grounds and research a good place to plant the tree so that it thrives.
Option 7: Visit a nearby nature area to look for a variety of plants.
See Additional Resources for more ideas to enrich this activity.
Power Plants — Evaluate
Option 1: Assess students’ understanding of key terms used in this activity with the Key Vocabulary: Power Plants student page. Refer to the Key Vocabulary: Power Plants teacher pages for the correct responses.
Option 2: Use student responses from the Plant Producers student page—and a rubric such as the Power Plants Evaluation Rubric teacher page—to assess their learning.