Educator Guide: Plant Power: Grades 4, 5, and 6 Unit of Study

In the Connect and Wonder stage of the pre-activity, students can write or draw their responses on their graphic organizer. The graphic organizers are also available in Word format allowing teachers to modify the assessments to meet the individual needs of their students. Teachers may differentiate the instructional tasks for students using the various Duet Text Set Model options to build knowledge around how people use plants in their local communities. The post-activity uses the Sunburst Text Set Model as a tool to explore how humans have cultivated plants throughout history.

Following the June Professional Development at the Genovesi Environmental Study Center (GESC), it is recommended the participating teacher:

• schedules a class trip to visit the center 
• completes the pre-activities within one to two weeks prior to the class field trip to GESC
• visits Genovesi Environmental Study Center with class
• completes the post-activity within one to two weeks following the class field trip to GESC
• continues to use the Project ECS@ESC Libguide  
• continues to use NOVELny databases,
  Teachingbooks.net and eBooks with your students. 

Inquiry is a fundamental building block of teaching and learning that empowers students to follow their sense of wonder into new discoveries and insights about the way the world works. The empowered learner calls upon information and inquiry skills to connect with what he or she knows, asks intriguing questions about what is not known, investigates answers, constructs new understandings, and shares those understandings with others. Students need to use the skills of inquiry to learn.

The Plant Power unit has been developed using the framework and skills culled from the Stripling Model of Inquiry and the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum. This framework encourages active learning and the formation of new understandings. The Plant Power pre-activity is based within the Connect and Wonder stages of the Stripling Model. Students will have an opportunity to connect with prior knowledge and gain context.  In Wonder, students will now have the language and background knowledge to develop good questions, formulate hypotheses, and make predictions. Your field trip to the Environmental Study Center is in the Investigate stage. When you return to your school, the post-activity is based within the Construct, Express, and Reflect stages. Inquiry is cyclical.  It is okay to revisit a stage of the Stripling Model as additional questions are formulated, hypotheses are fine-tuned and students develop their desires to independently explore related topics. 

Stripling, Barbara K. "Inquiry-based Learning." In Curriculum Connections through the Library, edited by Barbara K. Stripling and Sandra Hughes-Hassell, 3-39. Libraries Unlimited, 2003.

Duet Model

Throughout the unit, the use of text sets is presented as a model of integrating science and literacy. Text Sets can be used to organize the learning process by grouping texts including, but not limited to fiction and nonfiction books, eBooks, journal and newspaper articles, audio and video files and images. They can be multi-modal and multi-genre. Students can gain knowledge on a topic or variety of topics using text sets by pairing two texts to begin the process of comparing and contrasting the texts.

Sunburst Model

In the Sunburst Model, the "sun", or center, represents the main text examined. Each of the "rays" in the sunburst represent a particular text. Students are asked to examine one or more texts, "the rays", in relationship to the "sun" text. They gain a larger sense of content knowledge by comparing and contrasting the information presented in each text.