Engage/Elicit 

Discovery Question - Do plants eat?

In previous activities, you learned that plants have leaves that take in sunlight and oxygen and roots that take up water.  In this activity, your job is to figure out how the plant uses these materials.

Explore - Food-o-Meter Model

Goal: Students will determine the relationship between carbon dioxide, water and sunlight inside plants.  Students will learn this through the "food-o-meter" model

Students are given a particular situation to generate data. They run three trials manipulating the three variables and generating three graphs. 

Need to talk about how plants only need a certain amount of carbon dioxide and there is lots of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so this is never really a limiting factor in the production of food in plants. 

 Explain- Unpack your three trials (look at three graphs)

Goal: Students will explain the results they got from their previous experiment. 

Elaborate -  Give another scenario to the students -- possibly a real life weather report or we create that.

Goal: Students will explore a tougher scenario and analyze graphs.

Evaluate- Students come up with their own scenario and test it.

Answer the question - What do plants need to make food?