Life Support: Direct Water Flow to Plants

This resource provides a cross curricular design and technology project for primary children, which looks at what plants need to grow and on water transport in plants. The context is provided by a story about a boy who moves to another planet to build a settlement there. The problem is to design a way of transporting water for plants on the new planet. Students learn about importance of the plants for all forms of life and their role in many food chains. In lesson two children draw a plan for building a greenhouse which will provide plants with everything they need to grow. They also investigate the transport of water in plants and look at different materials can transport water upward as plants do. In the next lesson children select materials which they are going to use to solve the problem of how to construct a system to water plants gradually without using machines or human power. Finally children evaluate their constructions and discuss possible improvements.

This resource was produced under the funding of the 7th framework programme, as part of ENGINEER project, contract № 288989. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.