To introduce agriculture as a managed system that has environmental impacts, and how farmers employ practices such as growing pulses to minimize these impacts.
Objectives:
Students will understand how nutrients are passed from the soil to the plant through its root system.
Students will understand nitrogen-fixing as a concept.
Students will learn about symbiosis through the role of rhizobia in growing pulses.
Resources:
Instructions for growing pulse plants in a can, with lead questions (from teacher pack).
Diagram of nitrogen-fixation with rhizobia (from teacher pack).
Example of crop rotation (from teacher pack).
Crop cards 1 to 5 (from teacher pack).
Suggestions for further development:
Visit a local farm or invite a farmer to speak in class.
Pupils could record how their plants grow over a period of time – making observations recorded as diagrams/graphs etc.
Pupils could grow alternative pulse plants such as chickpeas and navy beans and compare rates of growth.
Pupils could research how to give their plants the highest yield through different watering and feeding techniques, living in symbiosis with rhizobia, or even planting different crops together.
Pupils could research (at www.iyop.net) the impact that pulses in crop rotation have on sustainability.