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Dormant (sleeping) seeds will only “wake-up” and start to grow if they are exposed to the right conditions. And, each type of seed has its own list of “special needs” that will wake it up. Waking seeds up to start growing is called germination.
Three important conditions for waking up seeds are 1) the amount of light, 2) the amount of water and 3) the temperature that seeds start growing in. Let’s experiment to see how these things affect radish seed germination.
And so begins a set of 7th grade experiments on germinating seeds.
This experiment came in two rounds, this first round was very teacher directed and asked students to grow 10 radish seeds in petri dishes while changing one of three conditions; the temperature, the light intensity or the amount of water. Students then made a simple poster of their results. Below are two supporting documents as well as two examples of Mini Posters.
Round 2 asked students to design their own radish germination experiment. They shared their posters from round one and then designed new experiments to test new variables that might affect germination. This time students grew 20 seeds in each condition. Here is the design worksheet and the Slides Template students used to report their results from their second experiment.
Finally, here are student examples of the completed report and a worksheet students completed as they walked around the room reading each others reports.
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