Botany Class Field Trip

On Wednesday, our last day, I took Grades 5 and 6/7 on a "field trip"--literally. The day before, I'd scouted out many plants in the play yard and the garden to use as stations for our Botany wrap-up field trip. I wanted to give the students a real-life opportunity to apply what they'd learned in class. Additionally, I needed this to be a class that wouldn't involve any papers to grade, since there would not be any more time to do so.

This opportunistic Gem Squash, which had grown up out of the compost heap, provided one of our stations in the field trip.

"Is this a fruit or a vegetable?" I asked.   

"Ah, teacher, that's a fruit!"

"Why, class?"

In unison: "Because it has seeds, teacher!" 

“What type of stem does this have, students?”

“It’s a vine!”

“What happened to the flowers to make the fruit grow?”

“Bees came to get nectar and they pollinated the flower, teacher!”

“OK, is it a monocot or a dicot?”

“Dicot, teacher!”

“What type of stem does this grass plant have, class?”

“A runner!”

And does it have a tap root or a fibrous root system?

Aw, teacher, it’s a fibrous root!”

“OK, class, what’s the name of the fruits that this tree produces?”

“Samaras!”

“How are the seeds dispersed?”

“By the wind, teacher!”

Our field trip wrapped up in the garden, where we identified carrots and beets (both are types of taproots,) onions (these are geophytes: bulbs,) and tomatoes (those are fruits, teacher!) We saw our bean plants in flower, and we checked on the broad bean seeds we'd planted after our 12-day germination experiment. Sadly, only 2 of those experimental seeds were popping through the soil at this point. I suspect we left them in the zip-locks longer than we should have.

This photo was taken at the end of our field trip after the Grade 6/7 kids were put into service by Sipho and Agnes to harvest their dinner: they call it Spinach, but to me it's closer to what we call Swiss Chard. Later on in the day, Michael helped the students wash and chop the leaves for the evening meal. The broadly grinning young lady in the front is named Mpumelelo, and she is very bright. The young lady to her left is Asina, who blessed me dearly later on that day by singing "Above All" as a goodbye to me.