Teaching sequence

Preparation: Take a clear plastic water bottle and cut it in half, discarding the top half in the recycling bin. Poke some water holes in the bottom of the lower half of the bottle. Then place good quality potting mix into your half bottle and plant some fast-growing seeds (wheat is a good choice), making sure to plant close to the sides of the bottle to ensure that you see some root growth in the soil.

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

5-10 minutes

Tune In: No soil, no green?

20 minutes

Find Out: What do plants need to be healthy?

25 minutes

Take Action: Which soil is best for healthy plants?

5 minutes

Reflection

Tune In: No soil, no green?

Step 1

Begin this lesson by setting the scene for students:

Now we are putting on our regenerative grower's hats and gloves to explore why soil is so important and how we can look after it. An essential part of being a regenerative grower is looking after the soil. Why? Well, the plants that we eat grow in the soil, and the animals we also get food from through meat or dairy also eat plants. We need to look after our soil because we need it for so many things!

Step 2

Pose the following question to students and invite them to discuss their answers in pairs or small groups:

imagine a world without soil. What would it look like?

Differentiation: Students requiring extension could record their responses in full written sentences; alternatively, students can use keywords or doodles to keep track of their ideas.

Extend the discussion by prompting students with the following points:

what grows in the soil? (Plants, including fruits and veggies)
what would life be like without these plants?
what would the world look like without plants?
did you know that plants help create clean air by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen? What would our lives be like without plants?
do you like animals? Can you think of any animals that eat plants? Can you think of any animals that eat animals that eat plants?

Explain to students that in this lesson, they are going to look at what it is in the soil that helps them to grow, and they will have a go at putting on their regenerative growing gloves and growing some plants!

Find Out: What do plants need to be healthy?

Step 1

Pose the question:

what do you already know about what a plant needs to grow?

Students may suggest things like soil, water, light, air, and maybe nutrients.

Step 2

Share this image with students (or create your own):

Explain to students:

These (soil, water, light, air and nutrients) are the primary elements that most plants need to grow, but each type of plant has different quantities and types of these things; it’s like plants have their own personalities, and they like different things!
Plants like tomatoes like lots of sunshine and even hot weather in between a good drink. Some plants, like ferns, hate the heat and the sun; instead, they like filtered light and lots of water. Other plants like cacti like it very hot and sunny with hardly any water. Other plants actually like it shady and dry. Some plants like to be planted close to others, and others like to have lots of space. Some hate the wind, and others don’t mind it. There is a plant for almost every spot and condition!
But the other thing that plants like is nutrients. And this is where we zoom into the soil!

Step 2

Share the following video with students explaining that it is a timelapse video of radish growing. Explain that a timelapse is where photos or snippets of video are taken over a period of time (in this case, a radish being planted and growing for 20 days) and then sped up and put together to make a short video.

Once complete, pose the following questions:

what has the grower provided the plant with?
can you see when the plant gets watered?
can you see the soil moving by itself? What is in the soil that could be making it move?

Note: Where students have completed this lesson, they can refer to some of the organisms they researched. Where students haven’t completed this lesson, you can share the following:

There are more living things in one handful of soil than there are people living on Earth! Most of these things are microscopic organisms like bacteria and nematodes. But there are also fungi, worms and insects. Share this image of a small sample of the organisms in the soil.
Explain to students that all the organisms in the soil are important because they do different things that help each other and help keep the soil healthy. They might aerate the soil, which makes it easier for the water to move through the soil. Or they might add nutrients to the soil that other living things - including plants and other organisms - can eat.
Option: This clip could be useful here, and even though some of the concepts are well beyond this year level, it gives a brief overview of some of the interactions that happen between the living things in the soil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlREaT9hFCw

Step 3

Now pose the questions:

what might a plant that grows in healthy soil look like?
how might it look different if growing in poor or unhealthy soils?

Invite students to share their suggestions through a class discussion. Through your discussion, you could suggest that plants grown in poor or unhealthy soils might:

be weak and floppy and growing sideways instead of being strong and growing straight up
might be pale instead of bright green
might have shrivelled leaves instead of full leaves
might not grow at all!

Record key ideas on the board in a T-chart where one side is labelled ‘unhealthy soils’ and the other is labelled ‘healthy soils’; you will refer back to these ideas at the end of the experiment in the next section.

Step 4

Show the students this video which is the same grower trying to grow radishes again, but this time they failed:

Ask the students:

what happened to the radishes this time?
why do you think the radishes didn’t grow well? (the creator suggests: the temperature was too high, the pot was too small, the soil was too compacted, or there weren’t enough nutrients.)
imagine if this happened to your crop as a grower. What would it mean for you?

Take Action: Which soil is best for healthy plants?

Explain to students that they are going to put on their regenerative grower gloves and do an experiment to see how healthy different soils are by trying to grow plants in them!

Use this experiment card: Experiment: Which soil is best for healthy plants?

Reflection

Invite students to work independently to respond to the following:

I used to think …
But now I think …

Differentiated learning

We trust that teachers are the best equipped to know how to cater to the diversity in their classes. At Cool, we incorporate a variety of differentiation strategies into each lesson. Firstly, each lesson in this unit appeals to an array of different learning preferences. Learning activities can be completed in a number of different ways - if a student feels more comfortable speaking rather than writing, there are opportunities to accommodate this.

In lessons that feature group work or learning stations, we trust that teachers will use their discretion in knowing how to best organise their students in accordance with positive working relationships and ability. Graphic organisers and scaffolds are often included so students can ‘visually think’ and keep a record of their work. While our lessons are designed to be 55 - 60 minutes in length, we trust that teachers will manipulate lesson and segment times according to the needs of their students.

The Connection Between Healthy Soils and Healthy Plants

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