Middle School, Plant Biology Projects, Lessons, Activities (Page 5)

Toxic Trees: Just How Toxic is That Black Walnut Tree?

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Every spring, gardeners around the world get ready to plant their summer gardens. They turn the soil over in their garden plots and add nutrients to the soil. Then they plant their seedlings and wait for nature to provide a bounty of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. But nurturing the garden doesn't stop there. In order to get lots of fruits and vegetables, the gardener must eliminate factors that can hurt the plants. Sometimes, chemicals in the soil from other plants and trees can hurt a… Read more

Are Soil Microorganisms Important for Plant Health?

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Soil may look like a bunch of dirt, but good quality soil is actually a complex mixture of dirt, nutrients, microorganisms, insects and worms. What type of benefit do these microorganisms offer a growing plant? You can test this by baking soil in the oven to sterilize and kill the microorganisms. Do plants grown in sterile soil do better than plants in unsterilized soil? What about adding worms to one plant, but not to the other. Will the plant with worms grow better? Some insects are bad… Read more

Bending Plant Roots with Gravity

Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th

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How do plants know which way is up or down? How does this affect which direction their roots will grow? In this lesson plan, your students will investigate how changes in a plant's environment, like the direction of gravity, affect the shape of its growing roots over a period of several days. Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

MS-LS1-5. Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.

Do Different Tree Species Grow at the Same Rate?

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Trees grow more during the early spring than they do the rest of the year. Because of this period of dormancy, or lack of growth, each year of growth is marked by a line called a tree ring. You can count the number of rings in the cross section of a tree trunk to show how old the tree is. You can also count the number of rings in a stem to see the age of a stem or branch. One way to measure the rate of growth of a tree is to count the number of rings per inch. Trees with high numbers of… Read more

Earthworm Castings — The Ideal Proportion in Soil for Young Garden Plants

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Everybody knows that worms are good for the soil, but not everybody knows why. Here's a project that investigates just one of the ways earthworms improve the earth. Would earthworm castings (or earthworm manure) help your plants prosper and flourish? If so, how much should you use? Read more

From Farms to Phytoplankton

Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-11th

"Morganza Spillway" © 2011 NASA Earth Observatory Can we use a model to predict the impacts of nutrient pollutants on an aquatic ecosystem? In this activity, students participate in a kinesthetic simulation to illustrate how nutrient pollution from agricultural runoff can lead to a dead zone at the mouth of a drainage basin. Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

MS-ESS3-4. Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.

Fungi Spores

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Mushrooms are not plants, but are fungi. Fungi include mushrooms, molds, and lichen. They do not produce seeds to reproduce like some plants. Fungi produce spores, like more primitive plants do. The spores of a mushroom are contained in the tiny folds around the stem underneath the mushroom cap. Different species of mushrooms have different types of spores, with different colors and different patterns of folds. You can make mushroom prints by removing the stem from a mushroom and placing the… Read more

How Do Plants Change the Buildup of Greenhouse Gases?

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Global warming is how scientists describe the gradual warming of our global climate. Scientists think that the trend towards global warming can be attributed to the build up of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere from industrialization. Another problem is deforestation, as we remove plants and trees from the environment to meet a high demand for lumber or by clear cutting fields for farming and urbanization. By removing trees from the earth's environment, are we changing how greenhouse… Read more

How Does the Stem Grow?

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Plant stems grow through a process of elongation due to cell divisions within the stem. Does the entire length of the stem elongate evenly? Or do certain regions along the plant stem grow more or less than others? Regions that are involved in active growth are called vegetative. You can conduct an experiment to show which regions of a bean seedling are involved in vegetative growth. Use a marker to mark one inch sections along the main stem of a young bean seedling. Number the regions 1-6… Read more

Plant Seed Design Challenge

Lesson Plan Grade: 6th-8th

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In this small group activity, students will build a plant seed (burr) from a Styrofoam® ball and other crafts materials. The seed needs to be designed in a way that it can be dispersed by attaching to a mockup animal (wool glove). Students will first test if their seed attaches to the wool glove and then carry their attached seed along an obstacle course inside the classroom. As students design their plant seed and mimic its dispersal via an animal, they will realize how some plants grow… Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

MS-LS1-4. Use argument based on empirical evidence and scientific reasoning to support an explanation for how characteristic animal behaviors and specialized plant structures affect the probability of successful reproduction of animals and plants respectively.
MS-ETS1-2. Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

Middle School, Plant Biology Projects, Lessons, Activities (52 results)

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