Life of a Plant

Learning Sequence:

1. Begin the activity in an open area where students have room to move.

2. Use the bean sprouts jars to cue students in to thinking about the life of a plant.

a. What happened to the seeds when we added water?

b. What will these seedlings turn into?

c. How do plants make more seeds?

3. Use movement to take students through the various stages of plant growth:

a. Curl up into balls and pretend to be kwolak/ seeds waiting for boorong/rain.

b. Walk around and pretend to water them with a watering can, or use a rain stick instrument.

c. Begin to sprout, very slowly uncurl, send out mayaal/small leaves to wait for ngank/sun.

d. Slowly grow upwards towards the ngank/sun. Send out more leaves, stand upwards as you are moordidjadbinny/becoming strong.

e. Make your hands into djet/flowers and call to the djilyara/bees to visit you.

f. Now, curl up your hands as your flowers die off and become new seeds. As you make new seeds you keep getting taller and stronger until you are very old, and you can be a home for lots of different birds and animals.

4. Once you have practised a few times and students are familiar with the cycle, move back to desks and transition into the writing activity.

5. Now, students will pretend they are a giant old tree. They will write down the story of their life from when they were a seed. For example, they might begin: A long time ago, I was a tiny seed waiting for the rain. When the rain came, I sent out my first leaves and felt for the sun. I slowly grew up and up…

6. Illustrate and share the stories.

DIFFERENTIATION IDEAS

Students can also demonstrate their learning by arranging, drawing or labelling stages of a tree’s life, by describing their movements (I was a seed and then I stood up tall), or by literally describing each stage.