CORNERSTONE OVERVIEW
PRIOR KNOWLEDGE (Before the Unit)

In this Cornerstone, students will begin the process of planting and nurturing their very own Brassica plant (i.e., mustard seeds). Rapid-cycling Brassicas are small plants that take up relatively little space and grow and germinate quickly enabling students to observe all stages of the plant life cycle within just 5 weeks. Through their study of the Brassica plant and the informational text A Pumpkin Grows, students will learn about the parts of a plant, where they live, and how they grow and reproduce. Upon completion of the project, a collaborative conversation will provide students opportunities to use vocabulary related to the content throughout the unit. This project will serve …show more content…
Throughout the unit, students will have the opportunity to witness first-hand the growth of their Brassica plant from seed to germination. Students will collect data on the growth of their plants in a Science Inquiry Journal during weekly observations.

Learning goals for the Cornerstone:

Students will learn how to plant a seed and understand why seeds are important.
Students will learn what a plant needs to grow and survive.
Students will understand and identify the parts of a plant and its life cycle.
Students will be able to write and talk about their experiences with planting a seed.
After

The Cornerstone project ends on the last day of the unit after finishing activities with the text Miss Rumphius. Students will share their observations and data from their journal entries in the creation of a final class graph of growth data and form hypotheses on why some plants grew faster than others. Teachers can extend student learning on the relationship between plants and pollinators by completing the Engineering is Elementary lesson sequence the Best of Bugs: Designing a Hand Pollinators (Links to an external site.)Links to an external