OBSERVING PARTS OF FLOWERS

In this activity, students were able to look at the different parts of plants and see how similar and different they are.  The goal of this activity is to practice observing, collecting, communicating, and interpreting and inferring information. 

The materials are as follows:

·      Hand lens

·      Two different flowers

·      Plastic knife

·      Something to place flowers on (i.e. newspaper)

First, the instructor asks students what similarities and differences they notice of the two flowers.  In the example, the two flowers used were the tulip and the rose.

 

Then, the instructor gives background knowledge and goes over parts of a flower while referring to a picture diagram and introduces terms like pistil, stamen, sepals, etc.

Next, the instructor gives instruction to open the flowers or cut them in half and asks students to look for the differences between the two flowers and write on a chart the differences between flowers 1 and 2 and write the observations down on a graphic organizer with categories for number of sepals, color of sepals, number of petals, number of stamen, and finally number of pistils.  In this case for example, there were differences between the tulip and the rose as far as number of petals.  The tulip had six petals, whereas roses vary in number of petals and there are too many too count.