In this realistic fiction children’s book, the little girl thinks her neighbor’s garden is much prettier than her mother’s garden.  When her mother harvests the Chinese vegetables from their garden and prepares a wonderful soup, she realizes the garden’s importance and begins to appreciate it.  This resource is a great way to embed multicultural experiences with the science standard into a read aloud.

Maria’s family lives in Honduras and does not have enough food to feed their family. Her father no longer has to travel to find work to feed their family.   A new teacher shows Maria how to practice sustainable farming, making the family farm yield enough food for their family. Having a guest speaker visit the classroom to talk about sustainable farming practices would compliment the science standard and this text.  In addition, comparing this text with In the Garden with Dr. Carver would be an interesting strategy.  Students could discover and discuss commonalities between crop rotation and sustainable farming practices.

This nonfiction text about the life cycle of a sunflower highlights academic vocabulary related to the science standard.  With beautiful photographs and clearly written text, this selection could be used to highlight vocabulary on a science word wall.

This nonfiction text about the bean’s life cycle has images that support student’s understanding of how a bean seeds sprouts and the stems develop.  The glossary highlights subject-specific vocabulary that could be highlighted with the vocabulary card strategy to support student learning. 

This nonfiction text features plants that have adapted to different environments and habitats over time.  This text is full of nonfiction text features for young readers to explore while learning content directly aligned to the science standard.  Adjunct displays, specifically a concept map, would be a great literacy strategy to use while engaging with this text as it is packed with facts.

This song teaches children what plants need to stay alive and what resources we get from plants. This interactive music video allows students to engage in kinesthetic movement while learning science standards.

This video reviews external plant parts to describe how they work together to help plants survive.  An exit slip can be used for students to show their thinking such as drawing a plant and labeling the five external parts of it.

The diagram and the article supports the content of the focus standard.  Students could utilize the diagram to participate in a jigsaw. Groups of students could learn about one part of a plant to become a part of the expert group.

This video reviews the parts of a plant in an engaging format. Teachers could use this as a pre-reading strategy to activate prior knowledge. It would pair well with a KWL chart.

This video highlights how different plants survive in different environments. Prior to watching the video, an anticipation guide could be used to frame the purpose for viewing and highlight specific components of student learning.

This video is a fun and engaging way to spark student's interest about the process of a seed become a plant.  Teachers could use an adjunct display such as a circular map to visually show the life cycle of a plant.

https://aroundthekampfire.com/2019/02/seed-dispersal-activity-build-exploding-seed-pod-for-kids.html

This website offers a detailed experiment for exploding seed pods to demonstrate how some plants disperse their own seeds.  Students will have to use the close reading strategy while studying the experiment prior to beginning to ensure success.  

This time lapse video shows plants growing from seedlings to blooming.  Teachers could use this as a tool to show the parts of a plant and when they emerge or as a pre-reading strategy to activate prior knowledge using a KWL chart.

https://garden.lovetoknow.com/garden-basics/life-cycle-bean-plant

This website shows the four stages in the life cycle of a bean plant. The article provides text, diagrams and videos explaining the growth of a bean plant. Teachers could use the fishbowl strategy with this text. Students could become experts in an area such as germination, leaf growth, or flowering cycle and share within their home groups for a shared learning experience. Many of the academic vocabulary found in this text could be used on a word wall or for vocabulary cards.