Background Information for Plant Growth and
Development
On this page, you'll find links that fellow
teachers and KSN staff have recommended. These
links are tools to help guide your background
research on the topics covered within your kit.
comprehensive plant info | trees and leaves | structure and function | nutrients | soil
Comprehensive Plant
Information
Biology4Kids: Plants
Tour though this dynamic site that leaps from topic to
related topic, revealing the science at work in the study of
plants. Good for educators and students, this site discusses
the basics of plants; photosynthesis; mosses and liverworts;
ferns; xylem and phloem; gymnosperms; angiosperms;
reproduction; special structures; and the relationship
between humans and plants.
Plants and Their
Structure
Full of useful photos and illustrations, with easy-
to-understand terminology (considering that it's a
college-level resource), this page is a great
resource for understanding the basics of plant
structure.
Plants and
Our Environment
This
student-created site provides great background content and
images about plant anatomy, flowers, seeds, pollination,
germination, how plants grow, photosynthesis, and the role
of plants in the environment.
The
Private Life of Plants
This subset of a larger website produced by the BBC
Online features great articles about the mechanisms by which
plants live and thrive, covering survival; symbiosis;
struggle and competition; flowering; feeding; and traveling.
Living
Things
This resource
created by The Franklin Institute Online breaks the realm of
living things into four related categories: individuals,
families, neighborhoods, and the circle of life. Covering
all bases from cells to interrelated ecosystems, you'll find
comprehensive links and content.
What's It Like Where
You Live?
Broken into
six sections, each focusing on a different biome, this
site—and particularly the temperate deciduous forest
biome—could be of great use for background information
and as a basis for as a comparison among ecosystems and
varied plant life.
Kimball's Biology Pages
The author of a biology textbook
offers his content online here at this site, so
it's massive and full of detail. The information
will definitely be too advanced for your students,
but this is a good source to have on hand, should
you encounter any tricky questions or issues. You
might find this section on plant growth to be the
most useful.
Related kits: All kits
[Back to
Top]
Trees and Leaves
Trees
Offering handy background information written
at a level that would be appropriate for sharing
with young learners, this site could be a useful
place to look for background information and class
discussion topics.
Wonderland of Trees
This site provides dozens of short
educational articles relating to trees and their role in the
world. With titles like "Why are Dead Leaves Important?" and
"How to Grow a Tree from a Sprout," you and your class may
find some interesting information. Keep in mind the
historical perspective of these writings, as they were
written in the 1920s, but still have relevancy today.
Tree
Identification
An
elementary school created this set of pages about the trees
on their school grounds that help students identify tree
types based on a series of observations and comparisons.
This site could be a nice complement to a class working with
FOSS's Trees kit.
Leaf
Types
Use this great
resource from eNature.com to investigate and compare trees
by their leaves. There's also a lot of information about
individual species.
Why Leaves Change Color
This brief but detailed page published by the
North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service explains the
chemistry and biology of seasonal leaf color change. Since
the text is on the more advanced side, this information is
most appropriate for your own background information. But
don't worry—it's not excessively complicated, just
perhaps too complicated for younger learners.
Why
Do Leaves Change Color in the Fall?
This simple site is designed to help young
learners understand the processes that lead to leaves
changing their colors in the fall. First, there's text for
the educator as background to share with the students, and
then there's an "I Can Read" section that students can read
to themselves or aloud that explains the basics. At the
bottom of the page, you'll find an extension that discusses
what plants have to do to prepare for winter.
Related kits: All kits, especially Trees (FOSS)
[Back to
Top]
Structure and Function
Plants and Their
Structure: Monocots and Dicots
These colorful images and
fairly simple text help to explain the differences
between monocots and dicots, including how their
different structures affect their mechanisms of
survival.
Monocots vs. Dicots
This quick page offers simple and enlightening visuals (even
if the vocabulary is too advanced) that explain the key
distinguishing characteristics between monocots and
dicots.
Why Do
Plants Have Flowers?
Using a fun narrative style and great illustrations, this
page explains the mechanism and importance of pollination
for plant reproduction. The technical vocabulary is well
explained, and this page can be useful for kids and adults
alike.
Reproduction in Flowering Plants
Along with explaining the
mechanism of reproduction in flowering plants,
this page also provides some neat facts and links
to other informative sections.
Related kits: All kits
[Back to
Top]
Nutrients
Feeding in Green Plants
This informative page, appropriate for teachers and
students, discusses how and why plants must "eat" to gain
the energy they need to survive and reproduce.
Plant Nutrients
The North Carolina Department of Agriculture created this
page for kids to explore the nutrients that plants need to
survive, covering non-minerals and minerals, as well as
special properties of soil, such as texture and pH.
Related kits: Plant Growth and Development (STC),
Experiments with Plants (STC), Growing Things
(Insights), and New Plants (FOSS)
[Back to
Top]
Soil
The Dirt on Soil
DiscoverySchool.com presents these pages for students to
explore the details of soil: its layers, what it's made of,
and what lives in it. The site also takes you on a
microscopic soil safari to examine soil elements up-
close.
Related kits: Plant Growth and Development (STC),
Experiments with Plants (STC), Growing Things
(Insights), and New Plants (FOSS)
[Back to
Top]
|
