Budburst

Grades 5-8

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

Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems (Grade 5)

Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems (Grades 6-8)

Choose a unit...

Unit 1: Oh, where have all the monarchs gone?

Unit 1 Overview

Oh, where have all the monarchs gone?

Lesson 1: Firefighters to the Rescue! Lesson 2: Milkweed Habitat

Lesson 3: Habitats, Chains, and Webs Lesson 4: Patient Pollinator Count 1

Lesson 5: Pollinator Super Powers Lesson 6: Is This My Habitat? My Ecosystem? My World?

Lesson 7: Patient Pollinator Count 2 Lesson 8: Plotting Plants & Pollinators

Lesson 9: Pea Patch Pollinator Game Lesson 10: Coming Back Home, a Success Story!

Core Activities

5 lessons
7-10 45-minute periods

Supplemental activities *

5 lessons
5-8 45-minute periods

Unit Resources

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

Lesson 1 - Core

Firefighters to the Rescue!

Students will be introduced to the local firehouse in a Chicago neighborhood that will begin their thinking about how a...
Firefighters to the Rescue!

Students will be introduced to the local firehouse in a Chicago neighborhood that will begin their thinking about how a small group of people can make a difference for plants and their pollinators. Then students will have an opportunity to put on their community scientist hats and learn about data collection protocols as they make their first, informal observations in their Nativars Research Gardens, local school garden, or through observing pollinators on a video clip.
Lesson 2 - Core

Milkweed Habitat

In this lesson, use the 'Milkweed Habitat: Home Sweet Home' story to engage students in a study about habitats and...
Milkweed Habitat

In this lesson, use the 'Milkweed Habitat: Home Sweet Home' story to engage students in a study about habitats and interspecies relationships. Students will learn that populations of different organisms rely on other populations in order to survive and thrive.
Lesson 3 - Supplemental

Habitats, Chains, and Webs

Using some of the organisms featured in Lesson 2 (Milkweed Habitat) and organisms in other ecosystems, students will create simple...
Habitats, Chains, and Webs

Using some of the organisms featured in Lesson 2 (Milkweed Habitat) and organisms in other ecosystems, students will create simple food chains and food webs to make connections between the flow of energy and matter through a system (ecosystem).
Lesson 4 - Core

Patient Pollinator Count 1

This activity provides students with hands-on experience observing pollination in their school’s Nativar Garden or areas around the school where...
Patient Pollinator Count 1

This activity provides students with hands-on experience observing pollination in their school’s Nativar Garden or areas around the school where flowering plants (and pollinators) might be observed. It may be used multiple times throughout the unit. Students will use the Patient Pollinator Count document for recording their observations. When students get to Lesson 8 (“Plotting Plants & Pollinators”), this activity will help students organize, visualize, and present the collected data. This lesson familiarizes students with the effects of horticultural plants. Using a Budburst Nativars research garden, students will observe and record pollinator visits to open flowers to help answer the question: Do pollinators prefer cultivars of native plants species (nativars) or true native plants? Answering this question has real world implications for pollinator conservation.
Lesson 5 - Supplemental

Pollinator Super Powers

Pollinators have special abilities to see guides that flowers provide to attract them; however, bees can’t distinguish red and butterflies...
Pollinator Super Powers

Pollinators have special abilities to see guides that flowers provide to attract them; however, bees can’t distinguish red and butterflies are legally blind! This lesson focuses on one super power that many insects have – especially the bees and butterflies. They see using not only the visible light spectrum, but also the ultra-violet light spectrum. We protect our eyes and skin from UV light waves with sun glasses and lotion, yet the insects have the ability to use these light waves to ‘see’ flowers differently than you or I do. Students should use this information when they decide which flowers to put in any gardens they want to create that will attract specific pollinators.
Lesson 6 - Supplemental

Is This My Habitat? My Ecosystem? My World?

This activity introduces students to the major components that make up an ecosystem; how biotic and abiotic factors determine what...
Is This My Habitat? My Ecosystem? My World?

This activity introduces students to the major components that make up an ecosystem; how biotic and abiotic factors determine what organisms can survive and thrive in that ecosystem; and how living things are interconnected and depend on each other for survival.
Lesson 7 - Supplemental

Patient Pollinator Count 2

This activity is identical to Lesson 4’s Patient Pollinator Count 1. Allow students to complete this activity once or twice...
Patient Pollinator Count 2

This activity is identical to Lesson 4’s Patient Pollinator Count 1. Allow students to complete this activity once or twice a week during the unit. ALSO, there is an added optional activity for variety and advanced learners called: Comparing Cultivars that is included at the end of this lesson.
Lesson 8 - Core

Plotting Plants & Pollinators

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

This is a class analysis of data to help answer the question: Do pollinators prefer cultivars of native plants species (nativars) or true native plants? Though this process, students will practice making comparisons, visualizing and summarizing data, transforming data from tables to graphs, recognizing and describing trends in the data, and posing new research questions based on their results.
1. Lesson 8 Plotting Plants & Pollinators
2. Plant Life Cycle
Lesson 9 - Supplemental

Pea Patch Pollinator Game

Students play a simulation game modeling changes in a plant population (a Pea Patch) caused by patterns of pollination. The...
Pea Patch Pollinator Game

Students play a simulation game modeling changes in a plant population (a Pea Patch) caused by patterns of pollination. The game shows that variation in flower color can lead to greater pollination and therefore greater seed production of one flower type, changing the population of pea plants over time. Discuss potential implications for changes that might affect pollinator preference. Determine how this information can be combined with the information learned in the lesson on how insects see to help research scientists better understand if nativars should be included in pollination gardens.
1. Lesson 9 Pea Patch Pollinator Game
2. Game Handout
Lesson 10 - Core

Coming Back Home, a Success Story!

Students have been learning about how pollinators have preferences AND how flowers attract specific pollinators. They have learned how to...
Coming Back Home, a Success Story!

Students have been learning about how pollinators have preferences AND how flowers attract specific pollinators. They have learned how to put on community scientist hats to collect data and think like scientists to make sense of all that data. In this final lesson, students will determine how they might be the solution to the problem of vanishing pollinator habitats. In their small groups, students will come up with a new research question for a new research project. Their final product will be a poster that presents their research question and some evidence of how they will conduct their investigation.

Pollinator Preferences with Budburst Nativars