Lesson Plans by Marisol

The STEM Teacher and Researcher Program (STAR) requires that STAR Fellows create a lesson plan in addition to their poster deliverable.

Below you will find three image-links to PDFs or Google Docs of lesson plans by Marisol in the order they were created. A short summary of each is included to ease your navigation.

1. 2017: The meat of this lesson plan is an exercise in basic mathematics for science. Primarily students are being asked to take the average of a set of data. The data is actual 2017 data collected by Marisol of stem diameter, plant height, and canopy length and width. As such the data lends itself to table-group jigsaws where each group has a specific kind of data. In the interest of creating eight unique sets of data the data has been split in half.
2. 2018: This lesson plan can precede the other (2017) or they can be nested as the purpose of this lesson plan is to mimic scientific inquiry that should take multiple class periods to set up, let grow, and assess. This lesson provides ideas for teachers and students to create a plant growth treatment meant to mimic the experimental set up on the island.
3. 2019: This lesson is not experiment-inspired (no number data, no experimental design), but it is inspired by an underlying botanical research skill. Additionally, it targets a Next Generation Science Standard (NGSS) scientific practice: arguing from evidence (which is also required by the college board for Advanced Placement Biology). In this lesson students become familiar with plant terminology as a means of identifying plants, a skill that was necessary for the experimental study. They do so in the interest of arguing for the identity of a plant in a Claim-Evidence-Reasoning format. The plants in this lesson can all be found in California, and are not necessarily found on the island. For assistance with plant identification or a write up of the lesson plan please e-mail solvillarreal@ucdavis.edu with proof of employment in an educator capacity.