Growing plants research

As part of our school pedagogical project, 4th grade students, aged 9 to 10, are responsible for all tasks related to gardening (cleaning, soil preparation, planting, harvesting) throughout the year.

Before they begin, however, they need to deepen their knowledge of plant growth. Thus, the first teaching unit is dedicated to learning how to germinate plants and what kind of environmental conditions they are exposed to, in order to take this into account when they start working in the garden.

The research is carried out by different groups of students. Each group plants the same type of seeds and during the process, some groups add a type of polluting agent or deprive the plant of some environmental aspect: without oxygen, in the dark, in silence, adding dye, oil and deodorant. One of the groups follows the planting process with all the necessary conditions for the plant to grow correctly.

Once the seeds are planted, they establish hypotheses on which to base their research and for a month, the different groups monitor the plants and write their observations on a grid. At the end of the month, the class group analyses the different grids of observations and reaches conclusions.

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 Author & Photo credit: Fundació Escoles Garbí