Lesson video

Oh, hi there.

I couldn't see you there between all of my plants.

Just give me one second and I will be right there with you.

Hi everyone, my name is Miss Hummel, and I would usually be a teacher in Feltham.

I love animals, especially dogs, they are my absolute favourite.

And I can speak three languages.

I wonder, can you have a guess at what three languages I can speak? I'll give you one of them.

One of them is Spanish and I speak Spanish with my entire family.

I absolutely loved learning about science when I was in school and I love teaching it now.

So I'm excited to start this lesson straight away.

Let's have a look.

In this lesson, we're going to learn about the different parts of a flower.

We will also learn about the stages of a life cycle of a flowering plant, as well as some different methods for pollination and seed dispersal.

The structure of our lesson is going to be, we're going to start with the parts of a flower and learning those parts.

And then one by one, we're going to look at the different stages of the life cycle of a flowering plant, starting with germination, then moving on to pollination, then moving on to fertilisation and finally looking at seed dispersal.

In this lesson, you're going to need an exercise book or a paper, a pencil, or pen, a coloured pencil, or pen, and a ruler.

If you haven't got those things, pause the video now and make sure you've got them.

Great, these are star words today, which means they're the most important words that we have to learn about today.

I'm going to separate them into two kinds of words.

One kind is all of the words that relate to the parts of a flower.

Those are pistil, sepal, petal, and stamen.

Have a go at saying those words, pistil, sepal, petal, and stamen.

And then the other kind of words that we're going to look out today, all relate to the different parts of the life cycle of a flowering plant.

We've got germination, pollination, fertilisation, and seed dispersal.

There are some difficult words there.

So have a go at saying them, and then we can move on with the rest of our lesson.

I wanted to start off first by speaking about my plants.

Now I have been buying more and more houseplants and it has really taught me how to take care of them, what they need and how they're actually all very different from each other.

None of them are the same.

They are all different.

Even the ones that are the same species as each other.

They're all very different to me.

So I'm really excited to start speaking about plants and learning a little bit more about how they function starting off with a diagram of a flowering plant.

Of this is what we're going to be using as a diagram.

And I wonder if you can recognise any part of the flower already.

We're going to start here.

Now the part I have highlighted is the part at the back of the flower that we can kind of see in our diagram.

And it is nice and red for us to see.

I want you to think what is the name of the beautiful part that we've just highlighted? I will give you a hint.

This is the part of the flower that usually gives you its beautiful colours.

So have a thing.

What is the name for this part of a flower? It's petal.

Did you get it? Well done I knew you would.

Now this part of the flower is called a petal and it's the part that gives us the beautiful colours of a flower that we can usually see.

This next part of our flower is at the very bottom of the flower and it protects it before it blooms. And it looks a little bit like a leaf it's usually green and we can kind of see it there.

It's green in our diagram as well.

This part of the flower is called a sepal.

It's called a sepal.

Have a go at saying that word sepal.

I struggled a little bit with that pronunciation because when I see that word, I almost want to say it like sepal, but it's definitely sepal.

So make sure you say it correctly.

The next part of our flower is those parts that you can sometimes see, which have almost like little sticks and then a little bit at the top and they're usually yellow.

Have a think.

If you have ever seen those parts in a flower, they're usually yellow at the very top.

Well, this part of the flower is called a stamen and that's the part of the flower that is often referred to as the male part of a flower.

And it's the part of the flower that generates and holds pollen.

Now you've probably heard that word before, but if you haven't pollen is that yellow substance and it's kind of powdery which flowers produce.

So the stamen is the male part of the flower and it holds the pollen.

And finally, our final part of the flower it's often considered the female part of a flower.

So earlier we looked at the male part of the flower and this part of the flower contains the seeds of the next plant that it could grow.

So this is where the potential seeds are being kept.

And this part of the flower is called a pistil.

Try and have a go at saying that, make sure you know what the part is.

So the pistil is the female part of the flower and it contains the potential seeds of the plant.

Our first activity is going to be to match the parts of the flour, we've got the names on the right hand side, and then we've got the diagram in the middle.

There are two ways you could do this.

You could draw the flower and then draw some names and match them to the parts of the flower.

Or you could with your finger, maybe go where stamen is and try and much it with your finger on the screen to where you know that the stamen is, and then have a go at looking at the answers and then you'll check if you got it correct.

So I want you now to pause the video and complete the task above.

well done.

So now let's look at our answers.

We have over here, the stamen, you can see where the arrow is pointing to.

Let's put that in full screen so you can see, we can see the statement is pointing to those little kind of sticks that have the little pollen at the top.

We've got the sepal pointing to the leafy part towards the bottom.

We've got the pistil pointing to the structure in the middle of the plant.

And finally, we've got the petal, which is the beautiful red exterior of our plant as well.

Did you get them all right? Well done.

I knew some of you could do that.

Now we're going to look at the first stage of a flowering plants life cycle.

The first stage is germination and it's when a seed settles in suitable ground, it breaks open and starts to grow.

This part of the process is called germination.

Have a go at saying that germination.

Now, I have germinated some plants before because I wanted to grow certain herbs that I could cook with.

So I wanted things like coriander and basil and chives.

And so I ended up buying some seeds from the supermarket and I planted them in some soil.

And it told me that I had to spread them a little bit far away from each other.

And then slowly after one or two days, I started to see just like you can see in my picture, how they were starting to grow a little stem.

And I was so excited because I had seen them when they were just little seeds and they already started to grow very, very quickly.

So that process that I saw and I got really excited about that was germination.

Now with germination, a seed is a little bit picky and it's only going to germinate.

If the conditions are correct or the conditions are ideal and it will only germinate if the soil is healthy.

It will only germinate if it's warm and it will only germinate if it has access to water.

Now, when I saw that, I thought, well, it's not that different from humans really.

We like to stay nice and warm in our winter.

We like to eat foods that are going to be healthy and make us feel good and we need water as well.

So there are some similarities between the plant and what the seed needs and what we need as well to grow and to live.

So those are the different things that a seed is going to need.

Next we're going to look at pollination.

It says here, pollination is the act of transferring pollen grains from the male stamen of a flower to the female pistil.

Okay so we're going to look at pollination and what that means.

I can see here that I've got a picture that I took of a little bee going from one flower to another.

And I thought it was so beautiful.

And what I didn't know at the time was that I had captured a photo of a bee pollinating a plant.

So let's have a look at what that means.

What did I mean that the bee was pollinating a plant? Like we said earlier, the statement holds the pollen for all of the plants and what these different animals and things do is they get the pollen from the stamen to the pistil, which was the female part of the plant.

And it can happen in different ways.

There's different ways that a flower could be pollinated.

One of them is through insects.

So we spoke about a bee already and how I looked at that beautiful bumblebee and how it was pollinating that plant, but it could be other insects as well.

Now those flowers usually have really bright coloured petals.

That's what makes them so beautiful.

And they usually have some sweet smelling nectar that is littering and attracting those insects like a snack.

So they're thinking, oh, this smells really delicious.

I'm going to go over and have a little taste.

And when they do that, the pollen grains are really sticky and a little bit spiky.

So when the insect gets close to them, they stick to the body of the insect.

Then the top part of the pistil is also a bit sticky.

So when the insect brushes up against it by accident, it transfers some of the pollen that it had on its body to the pistil and then the job of pollination is done.

This also occurs with birds.

Now, birds like hummingbirds, also like the beautiful nectar of plants.

And finally, sometimes the wind moves the pollen because their little grains are almost like dust.

And so they move the pollen to different plants and maybe even to the same plant and they then stick to the top of the pistil and then pollination has been complete.

So there are three different ways that a plant could be pollinated.

We've got insects, birds, and the wind.

Next we've got fertilisation.

It says, fertilisation is the process in which pollen travels through the tube of the female pistil.

Once it has been fertilised, a seed will develop.

So once it gets to the pistil, the pollen at the top of the pistil, then the process in which it moves down through the pistil to the centre of the pistil, that's called fertilisation.

Because once that happens, a seed can grow.

And that's what we call fertilisation.

Have a go at saying that word.

It's another one of those long words that we need to make sure we know how to say.

Now, next you're going to be answering some questions that relate to what we've learned so far.

Our first question is what does a seed need to germinate? Our second question is what are three methods in which a flowering plant might be pollinated? And our third question says, finish the sentence, fertilisation is the process in which you're going to have to describe what happens in fertilisation.

Now I'm going to ask you to pause the video and complete the task above.

You should do that with your pen or pencil on your piece of paper or your notebook.

Well done for finishing that.

Now, next, we're going to look at the answers.

So make sure you've got your different coloured pen so that we can mark your work.

Now, our first answer is that a seed needs healthy soil, warmth and access to water to germinate.

It doesn't matter what order you wrote them in.

As long as you've got all three.

Question two, a flowering plant might be pollinated with the help of insects, birds, or wind, make sure included those three for your answer.

And finally, fertilisation is the process in which pollen travels through the tube of the female pistil.

It goes from the top of the pistil to the bottom where it can form a seed.

Finally, we've got seed dispersal.

It says for the seeds to grow into healthy new plants, they must be dispersed or spread away from each other and their parent plant.

This occurs with the help of animals and wind.

Now, I want you to know that seed dispersal is really important because seeds need to spread out because that means there's going to be less competition for sunlight, water and nutrients.

And so they're going to have everything they need in their soil to grow big and strong.

There are different ways that seeds might be dispersed.

The first way is my favourite.

Animal poop could be a way in which seeds can be dispersed.

Let me explain why that happens.

Well, animals sometimes eat the seeds.

Sometimes they have yummy fruit that holds the seeds inside.

And so they might eat the fruit and the seeds pass through their digestion and then they come out in their poop and then the poop is on the ground, and then the plant can grow from it.

Who knew the animal poop could actually be so useful.

Then sometimes these fruits might have little hooks or might be sticky so that when an animal is walking by, it might get stuck to their fur.

And then when it stuck to their fur, they might move away from their parent plant.

And eventually, maybe they're going to kind of scratch it all for maybe it's going to fall off, but then it's going to be far away from the parent plant and therefore far away from any other competition.

So animal fur is also another good way in which seeds can be dispersed.

And finally wind.

Now have a think.

Have you ever seen a plant that in the wind, you can see seeds coming off.

You might be thinking of a dandelion.

So other plants have adopted seeds, which can be dispersed.

That means spread out in the wind.

The dandelion has little feathery parachutes.

So with the seeds kind of at the end.

And so that means that they can drift through the air and they can move somewhere where there's not going to be competition for sunlight or nutrients or water.

And lastly, it's not on our slide, but sometimes there are some flowers which are near maybe a river or a lake.

And if they drop their seeds and those seeds can float, sometimes the river or the current may take those seeds far away as well.

So water can also be a way in which seeds can be dispersed.

Our final activity is to draw the life cycle of a plant.

Now you can maybe look back at the slides to help you with your drawings, or you can just draw it from memory.

Sometimes you may also want to have a few key words underneath, like writing the titles, like germination or pollination in the different parts of the life cycle as well.

So you could draw it out.

You could have key words, you could use colours, or you could just use the pen that you've got, but make sure that in your drawing, it follows a cycle like it does on the picture here.

That means that it never stops at something that continues over and over and over again, that's what a cycle is.

So now I would like you to pause the video and complete that life cycle, that drawing of a plant.

Have you finished your drawing? I'm sure you finished it.

And I'm sure it looks really great.

Now to finish the lesson, you need to exit the video and go complete your exit quiz.

This is going to test your knowledge of the lesson, and it's also going to help you recap the topics that we've covered in today's lesson.

Thanks so much for completing this lesson with me.

I have really enjoyed it and I hope you have too.

Bye.