Grades 1 through 4
Structure and Function
Every part does a job, and the shape follows the work.
A radish builds roots to pull up water and leaves to catch light. A brine shrimp has swimming legs, feeding limbs and compound eyes. An algae cell does the whole job of staying alive inside a single cell with no visible parts at all. Put all three in front of a class and the question answers itself. A magnifier is enough, no microscope needed.
How the lab meets it
What students do that satisfies the standard
NGSS 4-LS1-1
Standard: Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior and reproduction.
What the kit does: The standard names roots and stems outright. The radish grows against the flat face of the bag, so the root is not buried and guessed at, it is visible the whole week. The brine shrimp supply the animal half, with swimming legs and feeding limbs a student can watch working under a hand lens. Two organisms, one argument, both of them alive.
NGSS 1-LS1-1
Standard: Use materials to design a solution by mimicking how plants and animals use their external parts to survive.
What the kit does: First graders look before they design. They find the part that holds the radish down, the part that catches the light, the limbs that sweep food toward a shrimp's mouth. Naming the job each part does is what makes the mimicking step possible, and the bag gives them three very different organisms to borrow from.
Algae, the odd one out
Standard: The same argument, applied to something with no visible parts.
What the kit does: Algae is where this subject gets genuinely interesting. No roots, no leaves, no legs, no eyes. One cell does every job the radish and the shrimp split between many parts. Students who have just finished naming parts have to explain how something with none of them stays alive, which is a better question than most elementary science ever gets to ask.
Free downloads
Our Lesson Plans
Each lesson is one Word file. Teacher pages and answer keys first, then the student pages behind the orange PRINT FROM HERE divider.
The Parts of Plants and Algae. Grades 3 to 5
What it covers: Naming the parts of the radish and the brine shrimp, saying what job each part is doing, and then working out how algae gets by with none of them.
How it is built: One Word file. Teacher notes and answer keys up front, then the student pages behind the orange PRINT FROM HERE divider.
Administrator Guide
One guide for the whole elementary program rather than one per lesson. This is the copy to hand a principal or a curriculum director.
All the elementary lesson plans
Every elementary lesson plan sitting in one folder, if you would rather take the whole set at once.