Sci 7 Plant Survivor Project

My students love projects!  The foundation project for our plant unit was Plant Survivor.  Students had to design, construct and explain a plant that was adapted to thrive in a given environment.   We focussed on the competencies of managing information and innovation throughout the project as well.  Students loved sharing their final creation with their peers and the school community.

We started with our Driving Question and brainstorming ideas based on prior knowledge.  We then co-created our 3 key focus questions to answer throughout the project. (I must confess, my job was to guide their thinking and their ideas to these 3 questions to ensure we were going to explore the essential learnings from the Program of Studies. They never knew!)

Next, we worked on our Managing Information competency and worked on researching the characteristics of 6 main biomes.  Students had "voice and choice"  by selecting which biome they were interested in researching.  They shared their findings on our research board.  This forced them to summarize their research- no "copy, paste",  check with their peers, and allowed me to efficiently check for errors or ommisions in their research without reading 90 papers. They also had a graphic organizer in their project booklet to keep their information for the next steps.

As we learned about the parts of  a plant, we brought it back to their project.  How are the leaves, stems, roots and reproductive systems of their plant best suited to their biome?  They applied their learning to their specific biome and designed an innovative plant along the way.  In the end of the learning process, they all had a unique plant designed to survive their biome.  They chose to display their learning in a variety of ways- models, posters, 3D posters, google presentations, prezis...