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Project Goal

The project goal is to provide students with a hands-on opportunity to interact with the live growth of plants in the classroom. Students will use hydroponic gardens to plant seeds and then graph, summarize, collaborate, and discuss the plant's growth. These materials will be used this year and for years to come and will provide students with a platform for family discussions, new applications, and real-world connections. This unit will be paired with health, math, and reading units as well, in which students will learn about the advantages of growing food and the benefits of healthy diets.  

 

How Project Benefits Students

This project is a year-long project that will be completed with fourth-grade students each year. I plan on implementing this project for the remainder of the 23-24 school year if supplies are purchased in time for students to see plants grow as well. This project will help support one of the four key fourth-grade science standards. Within the category of life science, students will explore heredity, reproduction, and interdependence. This will be explored by watching and discussing plant life cycles occurring right before them every day in the classroom. When students can physically see and touch what they are learning the connections become more real. This indoor hydroponic garden will promote curiosity and provide students with the opportunity to become scientists. This will be a huge improvement to the current unit, which relies heavily on text and video, and one small plant in a Styrofoam cup. We will measure results in a garden journal every week. Students will track growth (or lack of growth), life cycle, water intake per plant, weather pattern effects, and seasonal changes, and use their five senses to note occurrences, and so much more. We also plan to use the plants to cook recipes in correlation to our math units!  

 

Expected Outcome(s)

I expect that students will be fully engaged in a year-long journey or watching plants grow! Instead of students spending a few weeks learning about plant life cycles and the scientific process of plant reproduction and heredity, students will see it in action daily. Instead of independent studies, students will use teamwork and collaboration, make real-world associations to food production, make connections within all of their different subject content areas, foster a deeper understanding of life cycles, and most importantly have fun learning hands-on! Students will track plants using strategies such as graphing, summarizing, and discussion logs. A year-end project and presentation will be created by students to demonstrate an understanding of plant life cycles, the advantages of growing food, and the benefits of healthy diets. 

 

Detailed Cost Summary

The vendor being used is Amazon. Amazon has the highest-rated and most cost-effective products. Shipping and Handling are free for all items included. The items will all be black and contain single outlets, so they will comply with classroom allowances. For this grant, I am requesting a start-up of pods and seeds. In the future years, pods and seeds will need to be purchased with my classroom budget, but the seeds are the least expensive items. Also, no soil will be required to be purchased each year because the units I am requesting are hydroponic, making growing plants cheaper in the future than our current project of planting seeds in soil-filled Styrofoam cups. Items are reusable. 

 

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