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Activities

Pollinator Preferences with Budburst Nativars

Grade 4

Plants, Pollinators and People

Nativars Research Question
Should we include nativars in our garden?
Students Will Help Answer These Questions
How can we create a pollinator friendly garden?
Will all of the plants in our garden be attractive to the pollinators?
NGSS Topic
Structure, Function, and Information Processing

Unit 1 Overview

Rusty Patched Bumble Bee: A Beacon of Hope

Core Activities
  1. 5 lessons
  2. 5-8 45-minute periods
Supplemental activities *
  1. 5 lessons
  2. 6-10 45-minute periods

* Supplemental activities provide additional supporting NGSS aligned content, but are not required to complete the unit.

  1. Lesson 1 - Core

    Along the Railroad Tracks

    Students will be introduced to Andrea Gruver: Master’s Degree Candidate, Plant Biology and Conservation, Northwestern University and the Chicago Botanic...

  2. Lesson 2 - Core

    Fabulous Flowers Dissection

    In this activity, students will learn the anatomy of a flower and suggest and defend the purposes for the different...

  3. Lesson 3 - Core

    Patient Pollinator Count 1

    This activity provides students with hands-on experience observing pollination in their School’s Nativar Gardens or areas around the school (similar...

  4. Lesson 4 - Supplemental

    Plant Pollinator Match Up

    In this activity, students will match flower forms to their suspected pollinators and defend their decisions. In the process, they...

  5. Lesson 5 - Supplemental

    The Perfect Pollinator Plucker

    In this lesson, students will practice an engineering design process to design and build the perfect pollinator plucker. This lesson...

  6. Lesson 6 - Supplemental

    Patient Pollinator Count 2

    This activity is identical to Lesson 3’s Patient Pollinator Count 1.* Allow students to complete this activity once or twice...

  7. Lesson 7 - Supplemental

    Flower Know How - The Perfect Flower

    In this activity, students will build and defend a model of what they perceive to be the perfect flower to...

  8. Lesson 8 - Supplemental

    How Does Your Garden Grow

    In this lesson, students take another look at specific pollinators in their Nativars Research Garden. This time they are honing...

  9. Lesson 9 - Core

    Plotting Plants & Pollinators

    This is a class analysis of data to help answer the question: Do pollinators prefer cultivars of native plants species...

  10. Lesson 10 - Core

    What Will We Do For Rusty and Its Pollinator Friends?

    This is the culminating lesson of the curriculum. Students have hopefully learned a lot about the parts of a flower...

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