We have a fair amount of plants in our lab due to one of our technicians having green fingers. If you don’t have any or are looking to get more, then SAPS gives great advice on some essentials to have in the lab, and some others that will enrich the curriculum. For us it is largely been a resource that has built up over time, with a few new plants brought in every year or so.
For Year 8 - Adaptation and Inheritance, we used our range of plants to look at some of their adaptations. They were set out around the room at different stations, with information cards stating the name, habitat and the specific adaptation we wanted the students to look at. Students then had to go around the lab, looking at the plants and working out how that specific adaptation will help it survive in the environment it lives in. Then recap to talk about the more difficult ones or extension.
Plants – cactus, ivy, pineapple, philodendron, dracaena, african violets, papyrus and tiger plant
Some plant adaptations are easy for the students to understand, such as the cactus or poisonous plants (dracaena), whereas some require a bit more thinking and are added in to stretch students. For example, we put out the tiger plant and asked students to think about why it provides small environments or water tanks at its base for animals such as frogs, insects, bacteria and birds.
Also the Philodendron is an epiphyte that grows on other plants but why is this useful?
Any rainforest plants with waxy leaves and leaf angling were used to talk about quick runoff of water and how this stops a build-up of water on the leaf which can be a breeding ground for disease or fungi (you can link this to real world examples such as biomaterials and hydrophobic clothes and other materials).
Overall, we found this to be a great activity for adaptation that got the students out of their seats and interacting with real organisms. We found that the students enjoyed the hands on aspect of the activity, having the plants in front of them in the classroom and being able to touch them rather than seeing them on a PowerPoint and learning about the different environments they came from.
Resource developed by Norbert Kleszko and Joe Bayfield, The Elmgreen School.