Signs of Life: Second Grade labeling project

This is the second lesson in a project with a second grade class to label plants and the worm bin in the school courtyard.
In the fall I introduced the idea of labelling to the students and we looked at some examples of signs. Students visited the courtyard and reported in sketches and notes on Post-It's what they think a school audience would be interested to know more about on a sign.

This next lesson, students select a plant to label. The format of the label is a 5 x 7 inch Google Slide with a photo image, a sentence or two, and a QR-code to some more information.

Examples of 11 x 7 Garden Plot QR Code Signs using Google Slide format
Printed in color laser on polyester paper
by Mary Van Dyke for Jamestown ES

Draft examples in black/white of formats for 5 x 7 and 5 x 3 plant labels
by Mary Van Dyke

In this second lesson we work in small groups over two hours. I take six groups of four students out.
We tour the courtyard, highlighting the ecosystem value of the plants or plants with interest. Each student has pencil and paper clipped to a whiteboard.  Students can choose whether or not to diagram, sketch and annotate as we tour.

At the end of the tour we convene in the new popup greenhouse dubbed "the White House".

Students group into pairs, each pair decides which plant they would like to label. Some students - as an extension activity - choose to also diagram their selected plant.
After the class I tabulate the choices for the teacher - names of students, selected plant to label, whether or not it is native to northern VA,  and links to information resources on each plant.

The plants chosen today include:

The big native Willow Oak in the center of the courtyard that provides shade for us, and feeds the squirrels and provides shelter and habitat for other animals, and soaks up lots of rain too!

The flowering native Redbud tree where we notice lots of different kinds of native bees drinking nectar and pollinating the flowers.

The spectacular red and white Tulips that kindergartners plant each year.

Apple trees, where we see a ladybug.

Lavender - as its crushed leaves smell amazing.

The exotic rose-flowered Camellia

And beautiful native blue Bluebells

The Boxwoods that remind several students of Colonial Williamsburg.

Students also chose to study and label the beautiful flowering strawberries.

And the native Common Milkweed that is about to sprout in this bed.

Some students will label the worm bin - where today we observe worms, decomposing oak leaves, pillbugs and a spider.

This was a beautiful morning for this lesson.

I notice that given a choice, most second graders did chose to draw and diagram.
Some students though chose to only listen, rather than draw and annotate.
It will be interesting to see if the students who only listened, will design labels and signs as clear as the students that opted to diagram?

Next steps on this "Signs of Life" project over two weeks.

• Students work on writing a sentence or two about their chosen plant and develop a 7 inch wide x 5 inch high Google Slide with image, text and QR-code
• Print with color laser on to Xerox Never Tear water-resistant paper
• Metal sign holders, 7 x 5" horizontal available from SATO retailers, e.g. Speciality Tag and Label

Resources

See my recent blog on labelling and QR Codes 

Fern Valley: Observe, Film and Plant

Last fall the Multi-Age Class took soil samples from the Fern Valley garden beds outside their classroom.  The plants already in the Fern Valley beds are mostly native, shade lovers, and seem well-chosen for this site, but still the plants are not thriving. I sent the soil samples to Virginia Tech scientists for analysis. I tell the students today that the results of the soil test came back, and according to the analysis the soil does have the nutrients that plants require to thrive.

Ms Ortiz reminds the two groups out today will have 15 minutes outside each as it is a poetry reading to parents after this class. One student in each group of 5 students takes an iPad to film our group, the other students work in pairs to plant a plant each.

We go outside to assess the plants in the garden beds?  Have they grown? Students recognize Daffodils that are flowering. I have brought a thriving Aquilegia (Red Columbine) plant from my garden. The Aquilegia from my garden is already a foot high with flower buds.

In contrast, however the Aquilegia overwintering in the school's Fern Valley bed has re-sprouted only barely an inch high with one leaflet. The Aquilegia in this area of the schoolyard is certainly not thriving. I note too, that no weeds in this area are growing either...

So, if the soil tested OK, what other factors could be affecting plant growth here?

• Wildlife, such as deer and/or rabbits, may be eating the young shoots of some plants here in these beds outside the school building.
• The students and I dig with trowels and a shovel. The soil is so dense with matted roots that the students find it difficult to dig.  These roots are the extensive network of roots from the maple trees on the opposite side of the path.  So, another factor limiting plant growth in the Fern Valley beds, may be that there is too much root competition from the maple trees.

On that note, it seems better not to over-plant this Fern Valley area right now. We simply plant the Aquilegia from my garden in a fairly large hole that I dig amongst the tree roots.  We will observe how this plant grows over the next few months.

We then go as a group to the third bed that is more sunny and further away from trees, this bed is planted mainly with Common Milkweed. The intention here seems to be a Three B's Pollinator Garden bed to provide food for Birds, Bees and Butterflies.  In order to increase diversity and summer and fall seasonal interest, we plant some equally vigorous native plants to provide flower nectar for food for pollinators: Mountain Mint and Bee Balm - Monarda Jacob Kline. The students learn how to "puddle in a plant" and film our lesson.

Let's see if the Mountain Mint and Monarda, plants native to Northern Virginia, will thrive here in this more sunny bed along with the Red Maple trees and Common Milkweed.

Talking of names, one student is named Amelia. Amelia begins and ends with A, and rhymes with Aquilegia too. Perhaps the students would also like to write poetry about plants and being outdoors?

Resources
For plants native to Northern Virginia please see Plant NoVA Natives - www.plantnovanatives.org

Las Plantas - Plants: First Grade Study Plants in Spanish and English

Today is pouring with rain. Ms Zamora and I have planned our lesson on the theme Las Plantas - Plants, for First Grade to be indoors or out.

I bring a basket of spring garden flowers and some leaves to school. The flowers are: Daffodils, Snowflakes, Bleeding Hearts, Hellebores, and Spirea blossoms.

I also bring some Heuchera leaves, and an Aquilegia (Red Columbine) plant in a pot complete with roots, leaves, and flower in bud.

Today's lesson on plants has three parts:

Plant Needs
First we talk about PLANT needs (we can do this exercise easily in Spanish or English).
I ask the students what plants need to live well - to thrive?
In the English version as the students respond I begin to write a vertical acrostic on the whiteboard in the order of their response.

P - Place
L - Light, sun, indoor light
A - Air i.e. CO2
N - Nutrients, Nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium
T - Thirsty i.e. water, H2O
S - Soil, earth, dirt or other material to anchor roots

In Spanish, you can spell PLANTAS

P - Plantada en un recipiente o jardin
L - Luz del sol o luz artificiel
A - Aire, Oxigeno y Dioxido de Carbono
N - Nutrientes, fosforo, potasio
T - Tienen sed, igual que todos los seres vivos
A - Agua es necesaria
S -  Suelo u otro material (arena, grava, aqua) para que crezcan sus raices

In either English or Spanish, this is a great formative assessment exercise adapted from Junior Master Gardeners (see resources below). In the three classes Ms Zamora and I facilitate today the First Graders do not know that plants need nutrients. So we discuss nutrients in more detail, mentioning plants need elements such as Nitrogen (N), Potassium (K) and Phosphorous (P), or their compounds from soil or fertilizer. Plants produce their own food, "sugars or carbohydrates" using the CO2 from the air, chlorophyll and with energy from the sun. We also discuss that sometimes plants can grow without soil.

Plant Parts
I take the Aquilegia, Red Columbine, plant out of the pot to look at the roots as well as the plant. We recap the parts of a plant in English and Spanish: roots/rais; leaves/hojas, bud, flower, stem etc.
Look at the leaf veins. The leaf veins of the Aquilegia plant are netted or branched, while the leaf veins of a daffodil or snowflake are parallel.
Count the petals of the flower too.

Observing the plants
I then introduce the third part of the lesson.  There are microscopes at each table, and magnifying glasses for each student. Each student has a flower and leaf to observe.

• Count the petals on your flower. How many petals are there?
• What kind of vein pattern is your leaf? Is it branched or parallel?
• What do you find interesting or special about your flower and leaf?

After 10 minutes observing the flowers and leaves at each table, students regroup into a circle and report out.

• Some Daffodil flowers have 5 petals, some 7 petals, but most Daffodil flowers have six petals, and six stamens and their leaves are parallel-veined. 
• Snowflake flowers also have six petals and six stamens, and parallel-veined leaves.  
• Aquilegia and Hellebore flowers both have five petals and five stamens and have netted/branched leaves. 
• Spirea had so many petals, that most students found there were too many to count, although one student carefully counted 18 petals, and another 20 petals. But the green calyx of the Spirea was a clearly a symmetry of five with five sepals, and the leaves were netted/branched.

• The Bleeding Heart flower is beautiful and difficult to put in a category for petal counting.  Maybe you could say it has two petals or perhaps four? Bleeding Heart's leaves are easily described as netted/branched.

In response to the extension question, "What do you find interesting or special about your flower and leaf?" many students talk about pollen and pollination. Where might seeds form in their flower? One student dissects the ovary and ovules and finds small seeds already forming there.

This 45-minute lesson provides a base for further discussion and seed sorting, that Daffodils, Snowflakes and other flowers with a symmetry of 3 and 6 and parallel-veined leaves are monocots, and that flowering plants with 5, 8 (or a multiple of five and eight) petals and netted/branched leaves are dicots.

Resources:
Plant Needs in English adapted from Junior Master Gardener Teacher Leader Guide, Level One, p. 11 and Plant Parts Diagram p 241
Plant Needs in Spanish adapted from Joven Jardinero Maestro Guia Para el Maestro/Lider, p. 12 and Plant Parts Diagram in Spanish, p 251

Arlington's Growing Green Schools and the NoVA regional Schools Environmental Action Showcase

This week the Arlington County Healthy Community Action Team and the Arlington County Superintendent's Advisory Committee on Sustainability co-hosted a Growing Green Schools networking and resource-sharing event to recognize schools greening efforts.

The event is blogged by Jessica Haney at Mindful Healthy Life. 

The Growing Green Schools event helped catalyze and foster networks, partnerships and collaborative information sharing on health, food and nutrition and outdoor learning between local Arlington schools, community and providers of environmental and sustainability education.

Two days later, NoVA Outside, the Northern Virginia regional alliance for environmental educators partnered with Earth Force, George Mason University and many others to host the annual Schools Environmental Action Showcase.

Participating schools came to the Schools Environmental Action Showcase from all over the Northern Virginia region for an exciting day of activities including student project presentations, school displays and a competition for a school mascot made from recycled materials. Visiting VIPs included Senator Tim Kaine's representative Joe Montano, and a representative from Dominion Power.

The day was exciting and inspirational for all.  There was many people to talk to and ask questions such as:

• Did you see the Dolphin mascot made of recycled trash? 
• Did you check out the Dragon? 
• How about the high school students presentation of Radicle Radishes: their project growing Daikon radishes to help with an erosion issue in a schoolyard?
• Do you compost food waste at your school yet?
• Do you find the Eco-Schools USA framework helpful?
• How did the blades on your wind turbine work out?
• Are you tracking your school's power usage?

I was impressed by the increase in focus on sustainability in our area schools.
Many thanks to Eco-Schools USA for providing an easily adoptable framework that is followed by many schools already in Fairfax County.

Thank you also to the SEAS organizers: to Elaine Tholen (FCPS Get2Green Coordinator), Kurt Moser (Earth Force), Cindy Smith (GMU PEREC) and the Advisory Committee of NoVA Outside, and also to many many others for hosting and participating in this Schools Environmental Action Showcase - that is the premier regional event for youth-focussed environmental education!

I helped to organize both Arlington's Growing Green Schools and the NoVA Schools Environmental Action Showcase and I also learned from talking with students, parents, teachers and partner organizations.

During the week, I also taught several classes of outdoor learning at Jamestown Elementary School and started a Garden Adventures program for the Homeschool Club of Arlington. I put into practice the basics for students learning outdoors: observation and journalling. Students discussed healthy ecosystems, soil and planted native plants. We planted vegetables and weeded.  I developed signage linked to QR Codes to highlight "evidence of learning" in the schoolyard. I trained Middle School teachers on Seeing Math Patterns in Nature. And I continued negotiations with school staff and the community for building capacity to adopt an Eco-Schools framework at a local school.

For me it was a beautiful week for learning and teaching about sustainability both indoors and outdoors.

I look forward to more students and their mentors being able to join in these local and regional showcase events next year to share the energy, inspiration and knowledge!


Resources:

• Arlington's Healthy Community Action Team
• FAQs for Arlington Public Schools on the county website
• The Year of Soils Proclamation for Arlington County 2015
• Mindful Healthy Living Blog on Growing Green Schools
• NoVA Outside
• Eco-Schools USA
• Weed Identification for Schools
• Plant NoVA Natives
• Seeing Math Patterns in Nature

The Potato Project: Planting with Montessori (Part 2)

The Montessori class greets me singing the planting action-song to the tune of The Farmer's in the Dell.

This is the second session of The Potato Project so we quickly recap our introduction to potatoes (link to blog of the first session).

Today, I have brought in a trug of the seed potatoes that have been sitting on my window sill for a couple of weeks to sprout. This morning I cut each potato in half and the cut-side has already healed and is dry.
We have a selection of red potatoes, purple potatoes and white potatoes.

A student asks, "Why do we cut the potatoes in half?"
The answer is that we don't have to cut the potatoes. A new potato plant will grow from one whole potato tuber.  But if we cut them in half and each half has a shoot, then we might get two new plants instead of just one!

Vocabulary enrichment includes: trench, shovel, trowel, potato, worm, mugwort, weed, root, shoot. I have brought a wriggling worm and a pulled mugwort weed into the class in my trug basket to discuss before we go outside.

We go outside to plant the potatoes.

As well as rich vocabulary and potential for literacy in the garden, there is also lots of room for math in the garden.  I have already prepared two trenches. We divide the class into two groups. One half of the class weeds another bed that is full of mugwort and worms, while the other half plants their "seed potatoes" in the trench. I have calculated the numbers of potatoes per child and also the dimensions of the bed and spacing needs of the potato plants.

It is fun to dig about four inches or 10 centimeters (a K or pre-schooler's hand depth).
We look at the four inch line too on the trowels. Then plant the potato with cut-side down and shoots up. Cover the potato with a few inches of soil.

It is wet today so we don't need to water the newly planted potatoes.

Each group of students also weeds another bed where the first graders will soon plant more vegetables. The Montessori students find lots of worms and a white grub - and pulled out lots of mugwort weeds.

Next steps:
Each week the students can check the potatoes.

• When will the potato plants sprout?
• Do the potato plants need watering or weeding?
• When the potato plants start to sprout leaves we can cover the shoots with soil to leave a few leaves above. The extra soil will keep the growing potato tubers covered underground.
• Do we need to protect the potato plants from wildlife?

Resources:
Weed Identification for Schools by Mary Van Dyke, ebook to download and print

Preschool: The Planting Song
The Farmer plants the seeds
The Farmer plants the seeds
Hi, Ho and Cherry O
The Farmer plants the seeds

and repeat for other verses

The rain begins to fall
The sun begins to shine
The plants begin to grow
The buds all open up
The flowers smile at me

Click to find blog of the first session of The Potato Project