What is normal?
Overview:
This is an introduction to fast plants for students. Students see the entire life cycle of a fast plant-- from seed to seed. Students learn about germination, cotyledons, root hairs, true leaves, reproduction in flower plants, and seed pods as these features and topics "pop up" on their plants. Students keep a journal throughout the life cycle of their plant. Once or twice a week, they note the age of the plant, make a picture of new features, record specific measurements, and answer a question about their plant. Some data is collected on a Google Form as students grapple with "what is normal?" for their plants. Students use the collected data to create histograms and see the variation among the plants.
On days when we want students to observe and measure their fast plants, they are asked to view and follow the directions on a section of this slideshow. Each section is a set of slides with a specific color background and heading that includes the day of the fast plant life cycle. Step by step, each section leads students through completing an entry in their journal.
This homework assignment asked students to 1) use formulas on Google Sheets to calculate some measures of central tendency for the variety of heights of the the class's plants and the sizes of their cotyledons; and 2) hypothesize about what the class results for these measurements tell us about "what is normal" for an 8-day-old fast plant.
Students were provided with video instructions for how to use formulas on Google Sheets to make their calculations. Also, when students first made their measurements of the heights and cotyledon widths, these were entered into a Google Form that linked the data to a spreadsheet.