Over the past week, we have explored the different kinds plants grow in the Amazon and why they can grow there. We wanted to know more about the plants we would see in the Amazon so that we could write about our time “visiting” the Amazon Rainforest using details. We began our exploration by tuning into what we already knew about the Amazon Rainforest plants:
- They are green.
- They need water.
- They need sunlight.
- They need soil.
We looked at some trees at school and predicted if they would be in the Amazon Rainforest. We explained why or why not we thought so. When we explore a question we know that to find out the answer we have different resources we can use. For this question we thought asking an expert might help us understand what plants live in the Amazon Rainforest. We headed to OBI! We learned that the plants that live in the Amazon Rainforest are very different than plants that live in Germany. The plants that OBI had that live in the Rainforest were all inside to stay warm and watered frequently.
Once we came back to school we wrote down our 2nd thinking about Amazon Plants. We all added or changed our ideas. One idea we had to change was that all plants need soil, the expert at OBI told us that orchids do not need soil. Another new learning for us all was the word humid. We learned that plants that live in the Amazon like humid weather. Humid means wet and hot weather. But our learning did not stop there.
Once we ‘arrived’ at the Amazon Rainforest in the city of Iquitos, Peru after a three day boat ride, we learned that there are four layers of rainforests. As we made our mini rainforests, we made sure we had a floor, understory, canopy, and emergent levels in our mini rainforests. We added rocks to represent the plates, soil and dead leafs to represent the forest floor, a plant to represent all the trees and water to represent the rain and river of the Rainforest. Finally, we put them next to the window to get the sun shining in. When we came back from break time, we saw clouds and even rain in some of our mini rainforests! It made us realize that our mini rainforests really work like a real rainforest! We really enjoyed this. Writing and drawing our mini Rainforests with details was easy after all our learning activities.
Grade 1H Students
