Examining Curriculum Materials: Food For Plants

Examining Curriculum Materials: IVF: Providing Practice

Benchmark # & description: 5E6-8 #1: Food provides the fuel and the building material for all organisms. Plants use the energy from light to make sugars from carbon dioxide and water. This food can be used immediately or stored for later use.

Name of material: Food for Plants by Kathy Roth

Major Criterion	Indicators - What must a material do to meet the criterion?	Yes or No	Justification and Citation How does the material meet this indicator? OR Why does this material fail to meet this indicator? Be sure to give specific examples
Criterion F: Providing Practice Does the material provide questions and/or tasks in a variety of situations for students to practice knowledge or skills related to the learning goals?	1. The material includes questions or tasks for students to practice using knowledge or skills related to the learning goals in real world contexts.	Yes	In a role play activity (#13), students receive a visit from a plant that does not know how to make food. Students write a letter to the plant explaining how photosynthesis works.
	2. The material provides practice using unfamiliar contexts and questions or tasks (ones which students have not previously encountered) as well as familiar ones.	Yes	In activity #19, students apply what they know about photosynthesis to novel problems. For example, what will happen to a seed brought into a cave by a bat?
	3. The material makes it clear to the teacher and the students what precisely is being practiced.	Yes	Teacher guide pages explain what the learning goal is and the teacher role for each activity (ex; p. 50 - Bean & Plant photos: Learning goal is to describe photosynthesis. Teacher role is coaching and fading). Student pages explain what learning goal students are expected to use (ex. p. 50, "…come to an agreement about how the bean is getting its food in that photograph").
	4. The material provides practice using sets of questions or tasks sequenced from simple to complex.	Yes	In activity #15, students test plant parts to see if they have starch and determine where the starch came from. Then, they draw arrows on drawing of plants to show how the food moves through the plant. Finally, they examine a cross-section drawing of a celery and explain how the food moves through a celery.
	5. The material provides students first with opportunities for guided practice with feedback and then with practice which gradually decreases the amount of support	Yes	Activity #14 explains that the teacher role is to move from coaching to fading as the students apply their understanding of cells to a sand model of a plant. By the end of the activity, students are answering questions about their model on their own.