Pollination Game

Creator: Christopher Jernigan

Title of Lesson: Pollination Game

Intended Grade Level(s): 5th-7th Grade

Main Objective(s): Get students to better understand the relationships between pollinators and flowers.

* It is highly suggested that this lesson is conducted after students have had exposure to animal relationship patterns such as mutualism and parasitism, as well as exposure to plant development.

Suggested Materials:

  • Opaque plastic or Styrofoam cups with plastic lids
  • Water
  • 2-4 different colored food coloring
  • Cotton balls
  • Washable paint or ink
  • Plastic transfer pipettes or straws
  • Clear plastic cups
  • Graduated cylinder, beakers, or vials
  • Flowering plants that produce a visible fruit or seed (tomato, strawberry, soy bean), some with fruit and others with flowers
  • Paper
  • Marker/pencil
  • Whiteboard, blackboard
  • Pictures of various novel pollinator/flower pairings

Arizona State Science Standards Addressed:

Grade 4: Concept 1, 3, 4

Grades 5-7: Concept 4- Communication

Concept 3- Populations of Organisms in an ecosystem: PO2

Common Core Standards Addressed:

MS-LS2-2 Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems

MS-LS1-4 Use argument based on empirical evidence and scientific reasoning to support an explanation for how characteristic animal behaviors and specialized plant structures affect the probability of successful reproduction of animals and plants respectively

MS-LS4-4 Construct an explanation based on evidence that describes how genetic variations of traits in a population increase some individuals’ probability of surviving and reproducing in a specific environment.

Suggested Supplemental Teacher Resources – References/ Websites:

Lesson Plan Description:

Students will be playing a game acting as a pollinator. They will then explore flowers and the benefits each receive in these ecological relationships. Finally they will elaborate these ideas and design their own flowers to attract novel pollinators.

Engage / Purpose: Engage and look closely at pollinators and plants.
Materials:
Flowering plants that produce a visible fruit or seed (tomato, strawberry, soy bean), some with fruit and others with flowers
Instructional Sequence:
  1. Bring the plants you brought in and have them look at them and write down any observations they make for about 5 minutes. If they are struggling with what to write, ask them about the difference between the two plants focus on the reproductive areas of the plants. Let the students take the flowers and fruits off and look at them and compare them.
  2. Ask the students to share their observations with the rest of the class.
  3. Lead them into discussing the flowers and the fruit. Why do they have flowers? What are the fruit? How were these produced? Where did the fruit come from? Leave open ended for now, as this will be revisited later in the lesson.
  4. Show a video of the pollinators or bring in pollinators to the classroom and ask the students what they think they are doing. (example video:
** (Alternatively you can schedule a time for the students to visit a local botanical garden or school garden and ask these same questions).
Safety: Depending upon the plant that is brought in there could be allergy issues. Ensure all students are safe to handle the plants. Soy bean could be an alternative that is not common to have an allergy to.
Exploration / Purpose: Explore the plant and pollinator evolution by acting as ‘pollinators’ while playing a game.
Materials:
Opaque plastic or Styrofoam cups with plastic lids
Water
2-4 different colored food coloring
cotton balls
Washable paint or ink
Plastic transfer pipettes or straws
spoons
Clear plastic cups
graduated cylinder, beakers, or vials
Instructional Sequence:
  1. We will start off playing a pollination/foraging game. You will place out an array of your basic non-descript flower cups with lids, which have one of 2-4 different colored water in them (depending upon the number of students) with cotton balls ringing the edge of the cups. Half of the cotton balls will have washable ink on them(Fig. 1A).
  2. Split the class into teams of 2-4 depending upon the number of students to match the different colored water. Give them each a plastic pipette, straw, or spoon to collect the water. Only one student can collect from a cup at a time, and students are not allowed to talk during this time. You tell them their goal is to collect as much of their color as they can in the set amount of time ~2-5 minutes depending upon the size of the group and the distance to the cups. They will place their collected colored water into their group’s storage cup.
  3. Compare the volumes and color intensity within groups (there will be dilution of color if students collected the wrong color etc.).
  4. Now you will play the game again, however you will introduce new cup types. Open cups so students can see the water inside, and open cups with different colored flower petals again all with pollen cotton balls.
  5. Once again play the game (step 2) and again compare the collected volume and color intensity between groups and between rounds. **
**This game can be exaggerated to include sensory and other biases. You can use tinted glasses to make certain colors more difficult to discern, or openings to prohibit collecting ‘nectar’ from certain cups.
Safety: Be sure to make sure students do not run, and that cups are secured to a surface so that food coloring does not spill everywhere. It might be good to do this activity outside or place down mats to avoid staining carpets, clothes, etc.
Explanation / Purpose: Discussion to understand the connection between pollinator, plant and development of fruit/seeds.
Materials: Paper, marker/pencil, whiteboard, blackboard
Instructional Sequence:
  1. Present the data to the students from the engagement pollination game, which was being prepared while they were exploring the flowers and fruit. They should have experience being a pollinator and thinking as a “pollinator” and explored and made connections between the fruit and flowers. Now discuss the cotton balls some of the white ones should now have the ink on them from students touching both. Suggested leading questions: Which cups had more cotton balls ‘pollinated’? Which did not? Did this correlate to how much ‘nectar’ the students collected from them?
  2. What do these cotton balls correlate to in plant development? Bring this back to discussing their observations with the real plants. Ensure the students have made the connection to pollination and that this is crucial for the plant to produce seeds and new plants.
  3. Ask questions: Now bring this all back to the game and again discuss: What time did you do better in the game? Why? What did you get? What did the ‘flowers’ get? Why?

Extend/
Elaboration / Purpose: Extend current understanding by providing unique pollinator/flower pairings examples. I’ve included some unique examples in the provided PowerPoint. The video series on YouTube “sexual encounters of the floral kind” also has excellent examples.
Materials: Pictures of various novel pollinator/flower pairings: Fly pollinated, mouse/vertebrate pollinators, classic insect pollination examples bees, and Orchids/sexual mimics?
Instructional Sequence:
  1. Now that the students are thinking about flowers and pollinators, ask if they can think of any examples of pairings? Ask them to think in groups.
  2. As the groups are discussing, provide pictures and descriptions of different pollinators and flowers that they pollinate and have them try to pair them together and discuss why they think they might pollinate the flowers (what are the pollinators being attracted to?) (Fig 2.)
  3. If you have the resources and means you can provide the students with some sensory experiences to describe these pairings. For example provide the color picture of the flower and a sample of what they might smell like (rotting meat and red colored with skatole for fly pollinated, sweet and bright colors for bees, etc.),
  4. Bring this back together and have them share their ideas and discuss as a class the pairings and why these flowers might attract these pollinators. If there is time and you have already discussed various animal relationships such as mutualism, parasitism, etc. You can also discuss the costs and benefits of these examples

Evaluation / Purpose: Design a flower for humans, popular cartoon character (spongebob, teenage mutant turtle, pokemon, or something more natural? Ideally something creative, which they can relate to) or themselvesto pollinate as a way of finalizing connections between needs of flower and pollinator. This
Materials:Paper and markers/pencils
Description of a new pollinator
Instructional Sequence:
  1. Provide the students with a description of a new pollinator (could be humans or any other strange set of traits you can come up with feel free to get creative). Descriptions will need to be sufficient that they are provided at least locomotion mechanism, diet, and sensory structures/ capabilities. The descriptions need to be sufficient such that they can design a flower to attract and this new pollinator. Example descriptions can be found in appendix (Fig. 3).
  2. Ask students as groups or individually to design a flower to attract their pollinator
  3. Share their designs and pollinators with the rest of the class, and ask them if they can come up with any improvements as well.

Possible Alternatives and Troubleshooting:

  • If you are short on time or have periods less than an hour,I would suggest only doing one round of the pollination game outside.
  • For older students (grades 8 and above) you could replace the game with a model or video on pollination. I would also suggest adding a research portion in the extend/elaborate section to see if they can find the strangest pollinator/flower pairing.

Appendix

Fig. 1. Potential pollination game flower designs. All flowers have cotton balls (oblong shapes on the top of each of the cups), which will act as the stamens/pistils in this exercise. I attached these with toothpicks and plasticine clay. All of the cups should be filled with a colored liquid, which each team should be attempting to collect. A) The most elaborate flower which has petals and lid in an opaque cup. The petal shape or color should match or correspond to the colored liquid on the inside of the cup. B) An opaque cup with cotton balls and a lid. This cup should be the most difficult to collect from as there are no external cues to let the students know what colored liquid is on the inside. C) The most simple design, an open clear cup with cotton balls. The students should very easily see what color liquid is in this cup.

PowerPoint presentation available on the website,which includes images you can use for all sections of this lesson plan.