Pre-Visit Activities : Plant Habitats : Assessment K-Second Grade Online Curriculum : Habitats

Assessment
Give each student 3 rice seeds to plant as well as accessible flower pots, soil, water and window sills with sunlight. Tell students, based on what they have learned, they must make the rice seed grow. Students must determine on their own that they will need to put soil in the flower pot, plant the seed in the soil, place the flowerpot in the sunlight and water it regularly. Have students write their response in a journal.

Scoring Rubric (Out of 5 points)

• Plant seeds in soil in flower pot: 1 point
• Place seeds in sunlight: 1 point
• Water seeds regularly: 1 point
• Allow seeds to have air and space: 1 point
• Successfully have seedling sprout: 1 point
• Total: 5 points

Top

Cross-Curricular Extensions
Science extension
Have students plant oak tree acorns or tulip bulbs to see the similarities in what these plants need to grow.

Cooking extension
Have students make and eat rice pudding. Have them think about how doing this is meeting one of the student's own habitat requirements.

Social Studies extension
Most of the rice plantations in South Carolina were found right near the Coast. Rice crops need lots of water. Show students a map of South Carolina and point out where most of the rice plantations would have been found. Ask students why they think the plantations were built where they were.

Language Arts extension
Have students research and bring in samples of different types of rice that are sold at the grocery store. Use senses to determine how the rice are different.

Language Arts extension
Have students gather rice recipes and create a rice recipe cookbook.

Language Arts extension
Read any of the children’s books listed below to students.  

• Seeds Grow by Angela Shelf Medearis; ISBN number 0-590-37974-7
  This book is written for preschool to first grade audiences and provides an introduction to seeds and plants. The words and illustrations are both very simple.
  
• What’s for Lunch? Rice by Pam Robson; ISBN number 0-516-26224-6
  This book provides students with nice photographs of how rice is grown, produced, and packaged for human consumption as well as showing students some of the ways humans use rice in their daily lives.
  
• Everybody Cooks Rice by Norah Dooley; ISBN number 0-87614-591-8
  This book tells a story about a child who travels from house to house looking for her brother, but instead of finding her brother she discovers how people of all different cultures cook rice. A set of recipes is provided at the end of the book.  
  
• Rice is Life by Rita Golden Gelman; ISBN number 0-8050-5719-6
  This book is beautifully illustrated and is about the sawah, or rice field, in Bali.