Springtime is the Perfect Time to Teach the Plant Kingdom!

Introduction to the Plant Kingdom

Complete Teaching Unit

(Bundle of Products)

By far, the most popular items in my TpT store are my complete unit plan bundles.  These unit plan bundles contain everything you need to teach a thorough and complete unit to a typical biology or life science class.  All of my unit plan bundles come with a colorful and engaging PowerPoint presentation, notes for the teacher, notes outline for the student, several labs, homework assignments, daily quizzes, crossword puzzles for vocabulary review, review PowerPoints, and a final unit test.

I have just recently completed my latest unit plan bundle.  It is called "Introduction to the Plant Kingdom."  No biology class is complete without a survey of the Kingdom Plantae.  In short, life could not exist on earth without the plants.  Plants are the producers in every food chain.  Plants carry out photosynthesis, producing organic compounds from inorganic compounds.  The plant uses much of this glucose as a source of energy, but a portion of the glucose is passed up the food chain.  This sustains life on earth.  Not only do plants produce food for all heterotrophs, they also provide the oxygen that fills our atmosphere.

Simply put, this is one of the “must-teach” topics in a biology class!

This complete teaching bundle contains 10 separate products bundled into one digital download.  When appropriate, I have included each product as a Word document, and I have also included each product in PDF form.  Each of these products is sold separately in my TpT store, but buying the entire unit in one download will save you money.  If these products were purchased separately, the total cost would be $30.00.  I am selling this bundled package of products for $19.99.

All products have answer keys included.

The bundled unit contains the following.  Details of each product can be found below.

1. A 97-Slide PowerPoint with Notes for Teacher and Student

2. A 130-Slide Review PowerPoint

3. Lab:  Liverworts, Mosses, and Ferns

4. Lab: Transpiration in Plants

5. Lab:  Diversity in the Plant Kingdom (A Living Plant Lab)

6. Homework Question Packet of 99 questions

7. A Set of 3 Quizzes

8. A set of 2 Crossword Puzzles

9. Graphic Organizer Study Aid

10. Unit Test of 100 Questions

CLICK ON PICTURE TO VIEW LISTING IN MY TPT STORE

Topics covered by this Unit:

1.  Introduction to Plants:  Importance of plants to life on Earth, definition of a plant.

2.  Plant life cycle:  Alternation of generations, sporophyte and gametophyte generations, haploid and diploid phases, the production of spores by meiosis, flow chart showing alternation of generations.

3.  The Transition of Plants to Land:  The algae were the first plants on earth, evidence that algae are the ancestors to the land plants, advantages to a life on land, challenges to a life on land.

4.   Cladogram showing the evolution of mosses, liverworts, ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms from ancestral algae.

5.   Traits of the True Land Plants:  Alternation of generations, spores produced by sporangia, multicellular gametangia, apical meristems, vascular tissue, nonmotile gametes, root system, protection from dehydration.

6.   Classification of Land Plants:  Vascular and nonvascular land plants, bryophytes, tracheophytes, seedless plants, seed plants, gymnosperms, angiosperms, monocots and dicots.

7.   Flow chart showing the classification of the land plants.

8.   Bryophytes:  Characteristics of bryophytes, examples of bryophytes, explanation of why the bryophytes are still tied to a watery existence, bryophytes are nonvascular plants, bryophytes have a dominant gametophyte generation.

9.   Example:  The Liverworts.  Characteristics of liverworts, students will draw and label the structures of a liverwort, liverwort life cycle.

10. Example:  The Mosses.  Characteristics of mosses, students will draw and label the structures of a moss, moss life cycle.

11. The Seedless Vascular Plants:  The evolution of vascular tissue, the importance of xylem and phloem, why ferns are classified as seedless vascular plants.

12. Characteristics of ferns, students will draw and label the structures of a fern, fern life cycle.

13. The Seed Plants:  Seed plants are the dominant plants on earth, two groups of seed plants, gymnosperms and angiosperms, the advantage of having a type of reproduction free from water, adaptations seen in the seed plants, cones and flowers, pollen, seeds, the evolution of seed plants.

14. Characteristics of gymnosperms.

15. Characteristics of angiosperms.

16. Comparison of monocots and dicots.

Below I have listed each product with a brief description.  I have included a hyperlink to each individual product.  You can click on the links below to view a complete and thorough description of each product and download a free preview of the product.

Introduction to Plants PowerPoint with Notes for Teacher and Student

It consists of 97 slides that are colorful, informative and visually stimulating.  Pictures and diagrams are included that will greatly enhance your instruction to your students.  This product also includes a set of notes for the teacher (12 pages) and a set of notes in outline form for the student (17 pages).  Graphics, diagrams, clip art, and photographs were chosen to capture the attention of the student as the lesson is being taught.

Set of 3 Quizzes

This product contains 3 quizzes that can be used at various stages as the unit is being taught.   I always break up the content into manageable amounts of study material and give my students several small quizzes on this material prior to the unit test.

Homework and Study Guide

This document is a 9-page student worksheet consisting of 99 questions.  As I am teaching my introductory unit on plants, I assign a portion of these questions for homework each night.  This document provides quality homework assignments and ends up being a completed and thorough study guide for the unit test.

PowerPoint Review Questions

This PowerPoint consists of 130 slides of questions and answers and  provides an excellent review for the chapter test.

Slide Lab:  Liverworts, Mosses and Ferns

This is an in depth lab that looks at the structures of mosses, liverworts, and ferns.  You will need quite a few prepared slides to be able to do this lab.   Students are asked to compare Bryophytes to Tracheophytes and will discuss which are truly adapted to life on land and why.

Lab:  Plant Transpiration

Purpose:

1.  To measure the amount of water lost from the leaves of a plant over a given amount of time.

2.  To calculate the surface area of leaves on a plant.

3.  To calculate the rate of transpiration from the leaf under different environmental conditions.

Lab:  Diversity of the Plant Kingdom (A Living Plant Lab)

In this lab, students will circulate through 8 different lab stations.  At each station, the student is required to make a drawing and answer 5 to 8 questions.  The eight stations are as follows:

Station #1  Living Mosses

Station #2  Living Ferns

Station #3  Fern Gametophyte

Station #4  Living Gymnosperm

Station #5  Pine Pollen

Station #6  Living Angiosperm with Flower (dicot)

Station #7  Living Angiosperm (monocot)

Station #8  Fruits

Set of 2 Crossword Puzzles

I love crossword puzzles and I use them all the time in my biology classes.  Crossword puzzles are a great way to reinforce and review the many, many vocabulary words covered in a biology class.   Crosswords not only help with strengthening vocabulary, they also provide invaluable spelling practice.

Graphic Organizer Study Aid

This is a simple study skill graphic organizer that I use with my Biology students to help them prepare for the unit test.  The student will compare and contrast the traits found in liverworts, mosses, ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms.*NOTE:  This is one of my FREE items in my TpT store.  Even if you do not purchase this unit plan bundle, please download this freebie!!

Unit Test

This unit test has 100 questions.  There are 63 fill in the blank questions, 11 matching questions, and 26 multiple choice questions.

This final link will return you to the product-listing page on TeachersPayTeachers.com.   

Happy Teaching!

Introduction to Plants:  A Complete Unit Plan

 

Genetics in the Laboratory

Do you want to do a great genetics lab with your students, but don't have time for fruit flies?

Having enough "time" is an issue for me every single year!  I finally had to come to the realization that my fruit fly genetics lab would have to go.  It is such a great lab, but just too time consuming.

Now we grow corn!  It only takes a few minutes to plant and you are practically done!  I do have my students water their corn every few days, and in about 2 weeks we are ready to do the lab.

In corn, green stem (due to chlorophyll production) is dominant over albino stem.  I order seeds that are the F-2 offspring of heterozygous parents.  The expected ratio when the seeds grow is, of course, 3/4 green stem and 1/4 albino stem.  Students then compare the expected ratios to the actual number of each type of offspring observed.

For an added component to the lab, have the students consider the effect of the environment on the expression of the gene. When the seeds are first planted, I have half the class place their trays on a table in front of a window.  The other half of the class place their trays in a cabinet in complete darkness. When the seeds finally sprout and grow, we compare the number of albinos grown in the dark to the number of albinos grown in the light.

For those plants grown in the light, the results are fairly close to the expected 3:1 ratio.  But, the seeds grown in the dark are a different story.  100% of the seeds grown in the dark turn out to be albino.

After this first observation, all trays are left in the light for 48 hours, and a second observation is made two days later.  Miraculously : )  about 3/4's of the albinos from the dark trays have now turned green.

Students quickly determine that the environment plays a very important role in gene expression.

If you choose, you can order seeds showing two traits as seen in the photo to the left.  When these seeds were grown, students could determine the expected and actual numbers of green and albino stems as well as the number of tall and dwarf plants.

You can view this lab in my TpT store by clicking this link:

Lab: The Effect of the Environment on Gene Expression

Or, you might want to try this as a "Virtual Lab" for distance learning and 1:1 classrooms.  You can check out the "Virtual Lab Version" by clicking this link.

Earth Day Activities for Grades 2 - 12

Part of our responsibility as science teachers is to teach our science students how to be good stewards of the environment.  I think the first step is to get our kids excited about the living organisms that inhabit this planet.  As a biology teacher, I do this every day!  Each day in my class, I throw out a bit of fun trivia, or discuss the characteristics of an unusual creature or show a 1-2 minute video from youtube.  I do this each and every day.  It only takes a couple of minutes, and then we move on to the lesson of the day.

But now we are to the time of the year that we need to start thinking about some special activities for Earth Day.  I have developed a set of PowerPoint slides that I call "The Mother Nature Awards for the Planet Earth."

Here is an example of one of the slides:

Each slide has a photograph (or two) of an unusual plant or animal, followed by 4-6 fun and interesting facts about that living organism.  The response from my high school students is quite good.  They really enjoy hearing about my "award-winning" creatures.

These are suitable for grades 2 - 12.  

For the younger kids, I developed a set of activity worksheets.  The listing for grades 2-5 comes with a set of activity worksheets (42 pages) for the students to complete as the PowerPoint slide is being viewed.  The finished worksheets can be put together to make a great Mother Nature Award book.

The listing for grades 6-12 comes with a worksheet for students to conduct their own research to develop a PowerPoint slide for a Mother Nature Award of their own choosing.  This makes a nice homework assignment for a grade, or for a great extra credit opportunity.

And finally, students of all ages can enjoy this FREE PowerPoint that I created on the history and the background of Earth Day.

Whatever you decide to do for Earth Day, just make sure the students understand how important it is that we all work together to save Planet Earth.

Happy Earth Day!

Earth Day Freebie! A History of Earth Day

Earth Day

April 22

Most of our students know that we celebrate Earth Day "sometime in the spring", but do your students know the origin and history of Earth Day?


The first Earth Day was organized by Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, and was held in 1970.  Since that first observance of Earth Day, it has turned into a global event that is recognized by millions around the globe. I prepared a 25-slide PowerPoint for my biology students to teach them about the history, background, and origin of Earth Day.  This is a FREE download and all are welcome to use it in your classrooms.  It is suitable for children of all ages.

What is Earth Day? 

(Click Here For Free PowerPoint!)

Enjoy this freebie......

.....and Happy Earth Day!!

Monohybrid Genetics Practice with Punnett Squares for Middle and High School Biology

This free monohybrid genetics practice worksheet with Punnett squares is one of the best ways to help middle and high school biology students apply what they have learned about dominant and recessive traits. In this worksheet, students practice setting up Punnett squares, identifying genotypes and phenotypes, and analyzing simple one-trait crosses using familiar human traits. After years of teaching genetics, I have found that students are naturally curious about traits like widow’s peak, hitchhiker’s thumb, crooked little finger, and even tongue rolling. That curiosity makes monohybrid crosses one of the most engaging and accessible starting points in any genetics unit.

Why Monohybrid Genetics Starts with Mendel

Thanks to the work of Gregor Mendel, the study of genetics began in an abbey garden in the mid-1800s. Through years of careful breeding of pea plants, Mendel established the basic laws of inheritance that biology teachers still rely on today. His work provides the foundation for understanding how traits are passed from parents to offspring and why predictable patterns appear in genetics problems.

Nearly every middle and high school biology genetics unit begins with Mendel’s story. From his experiments, students learn essential genetics vocabulary such as trait, gene, allele, dominant, recessive, homozygous, heterozygous, genotype, phenotype, and segregation. Once these terms are introduced, instruction quickly moves to Punnett squares and probability.

The Real Challenge with Teaching Punnett Squares

For many biology teachers, this is where instruction can become frustrating. The issue is rarely that genetics is too difficult or that students cannot understand Punnett squares. Instead, the problem is a lack of meaningful practice. Many biology textbooks provide only a few genetics problems, which is not enough for students to build confidence with monohybrid crosses.

After many years in the biology classroom, I have learned that students need repeated, structured practice with simple one-factor crosses before moving on to more advanced genetics topics. That need is exactly why I created this resource.

Free Monohybrid Genetics Practice Worksheet (Punnett Squares)

One of my most used resources is Monohybrid Mice, a free monohybrid genetics practice worksheet designed to reinforce Punnett squares. Before students attempt dihybrid crosses or more complex inheritance patterns, they must be comfortable completing a basic monohybrid cross.

This free worksheet includes four carefully designed problems. Students complete a Punnett square, record genotypes and phenotypes, calculate probabilities, and answer follow-up questions that check for understanding. All problems focus on mouse coat color, which keeps the practice consistent and easy to follow while students focus on the genetics rather than decoding new traits.

Printable and Digital Options for Any Classroom

This genetics practice resource includes both a printable version for traditional classrooms and a digital Google Apps version for paperless instruction. It works well in middle school and high school biology classes, 1:1 classrooms, and distance learning environments.

Looking for a Complete Genetics Teaching Unit?

If you need a ready-to-use genetics and heredity unit for high school biology, my complete Genetics Teaching Unit includes everything you need to teach this topic with confidence. This comprehensive unit features a PowerPoint with student-friendly notes, hands-on labs, practice worksheets, review games, quizzes, and a full unit test. It is designed to save you planning time while giving students multiple opportunities to master genetics concepts.

👉 Click here to view the complete Genetics and Heredity Unit on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Extend Learning with More Genetics Practice

Once students have mastered monohybrid crosses, they are ready to move on to more complex inheritance patterns. Related genetics resources that pair well with this free practice include:

Genetics Teaching PowerPoint with Notes for Teacher and Students

Dihybrid Genetics Practice Problems

Dihybrid Genetics Color By Number

Genetics Lab

Incomplete Dominance Practice Problems

Incomplete Dominance Color by Number

Sex-Linked Traits Practice Problems

Pedigree Tables

Genetics Warm Ups and Bell Ringers

Codominance and Multiple Alleles Practice Problems

Enjoy the freebie, and best of luck with your genetics unit.

Muir Woods National Monument: The Coast Redwood Trees

Guest Blogger:  My Own Daughter!

I am blessed to have the two most wonderful daughters in the whole, wide world!  My oldest, Faith, just returned from a trip to San Francisco.  While there, Faith had the opportunity to see one of the things on MY bucket list .... the Coast Redwood trees.  She graciously agreed to write a blog post about her experience in the Muir Woods National Monument.  So without further ado, here's Faith!

Faith with Kate (dear friend and
awesome roommate!)

This past week, I went on a trip with my scholarship group to San Francisco.  We toured all over the city for four days and saw all the sights from the Golden Gate Bridge to Chinatown to Berkeley and more.  We had a blast everywhere we went, but I think my favorite part of the trip was visiting Muir Woods. 

As you can tell from the rest of my mom’s blog, we’re pretty big on nature in this family, so I was pretty psyched that this was included on our trip.

Friend Zack

A few facts about Muir Woods: Muir Woods is a remnant of the ancient coast redwood forests that covered much of the northern California coastal valleys before the 1800s.  Today, it is located twelve miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

150 million years ago, redwood-like trees covered much of the Northern Hemisphere. Due to climate change, the range of the redwood tree is much diminished.  Today, there are two species of redwood in California, the coast redwood and the giant sequoia.  The coast redwoods are found in Muir Woods and on a thin, discontinuous strip of land 500 miles long from southern Oregon to Big Sur.  The giant sequoias are found in small groves on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada.

The tallest redwood in Muir Woods is 252 feet tall, but the tallest in the world is 379.1 feet tall and is located in Redwood National Park.  This makes the redwood the tallest living thing in the whole world.  The tallest redwood is also up to 2,000 years old (though the average mature redwood is 600-800 years old)!  Its bark is a foot thick and its diameter is up to 22 feet.  The reason the redwood trees reach such incredible age and size is largely due to their incredible bark.  The bark grows from six to twelve inches thick and protects the tree from insects, fungi, and even fire.  Repeated hot fires can burn through the bark and cause hollows in the tree, but even then the redwood survives.

Fire actually plays a fairly important role in the life of the redwood.  Fire clears the forest floor of smaller plants and debris so that new redwood seeds can reach the ground and take root.  Furthermore the forest fires recycle nutrients and turns debris into ash.  In the 1800s, local towns and cities began suppressing these fires and upsetting the natural cycles of the forest.  The wildfires that would occur every 20-50 years were an integral part of the life cycle of the redwoods.  Nowadays, the National Park Service conducts prescribed burnings in order to re-establish fire’s natural role in the forest.

Redwoods are conifers and reproduce via cones.  If a cone finds purchase in warm, moist soil it may germinate and root.  A seedling may grow two or three inches in its first year of life.  However, in well-established forests such as Muir Woods, burl sprouting accounts for most reproduction of the redwoods.  A burl (pictured below)  is a mass of dormant buds that grows at the base, roots, or sides of the tree.  When the tree is injured or the burl is affected, the burl may sprout which gives the redwoods great competitive advantage over other trees that reproduce by seeds only. 

Another fun fact about redwoods is that they occasionally grow in family circles.  This process that takes hundreds of years.  When a redwood is fatally damaged, it will send up hundreds of burl sprouts.  Over time, only a handful of them will reach maturity.  These mature surviving trees often take root in a circle around the old, dying tree, forming “family circles.”

Muir Woods is a specialized forest environment that provides the habitat for a range of flora and fauna adapted to low light and moist conditions.  Such undergrowth includes redwood sorrel (pictured to the left), sword ferns, and mosses.  Bay laurels and big-leaf maples find purchase in rare patches of sunlight.  Douglas firs are interspersed among these other trees.  The animals of the forest include deer, spotted owls, bats, raccoons, warblers, kinglets, thrushes, garter snakes, rubber boas, and California giant salamanders.  The most common are Steller’s jays, Sonoma chipmucks, gray squirrels, and slimy bright banana slugs (in the rainy season).

Though we were there on a dry day and did not get to see any banana slugs, the woods were simply amazing.  We had spent a hot day in San Francisco the previous day and were shocked to find that the woods were downright cold and very wet.  We thoroughly enjoyed our two mile walk through the woods, and I highly recommend it to nature enthusiasts young and old alike!

For more information visit the Muir Woods website.

Free Graphic Organizer for Comparing Groups of Living Plants

Click photo to see all of my
plant products in my TpT store.

One of my goals of late has been to spruce up, improve and update the quality of my teaching materials on plants.  No changes had to made to the content.  I love teaching plants, and I was already doing a great job with the content.  I just wanted to make my materials more attractive and more visually appealing for my students.

So what's new?  I have made a very picture-ific 97-slide PowerPoint presentation, added some crossword puzzles, a set of PowerPoint review questions, and some new daily quizzes.   I have plans for new homework assignments, study guides, and a few new labs I want to try out.  My problem is that I have more ideas than I have time to carry them out!  All in good time, I guess.

At any rate, one of the new things I have just created is a graphic organizer for comparing and contrasting the major groups of living plants. When a lot of new material has been covered, my students sometimes struggle with remembering all the details.  A teaching tool that never fails to work is a graphic organizer. When the content is logically organized and put into place, studying by the student becomes much more effective.

I have listed this new graphic organizer for plants in my TpT store.  It allows the students to compare the liverworts, mosses, ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms.  It is a freebie, so be sure to click the links below and grab a copy for yourself.  I hope you find it useful.

Graphic Organizer:  Comparing Groups of Living Plants