Unit 9 — May: Horticulture and Biodiversity
Description
May emphasizes plant science through horticulture and ecology. Students explore flower types and characteristics, design floral arrangements, and learn about design principles and artistic impression. They participate in a school landscaping contest, distinguishing between floral plants, landscape plants, and house plants while applying plant adaptations to landscape design with given budgets. The unit includes measuring plant biodiversity using transects and identifying species using field guides and digital apps. Students collect plants, create pressings, and label specimens with scientific names.
Essential Questions
- How do we use plants in design and landscaping?
- What methods help us measure and understand biodiversity?
- How do plant adaptations relate to their uses in landscaping?
Learning Objectives
- Identify different types of flowers and understand their characteristics
- Apply design principles to create floral arrangements
- Understand plant adaptations and their applications in landscaping
- Use transects to collect and analyze biodiversity data
- Identify plant species using multiple resources
- Create scientific plant collections and properly label specimens
- Design landscapes within budget constraints
Supplemental Resources
- Graph paper for landscape design sketches
- Markers, crayons, and colored pencils for design illustrations
- Printed field guides for plant identification
- Poster paper for presenting biodiversity findings
- Index cards for labeling plant specimens with scientific names
Crosscutting Concepts
Disciplinary Core Ideas
Earth and Space Sciences
Life Sciences
Science and Engineering Practices
Students engage in reading informational texts, conducting research, and producing written work across all units. They write reports, blog posts, and portfolio updates on agricultural topics; engage in collaborative discussions about food systems, natural resources, and animal science; present findings using multimedia tools; and gather information from multiple sources to support claims about agriculture and the environment.
Students apply mathematical reasoning throughout the curriculum, including calculating food costs and nutrition from grocery advertisements, computing feed amounts and percentages for livestock, determining square footage for chicken coop design, converting units of measurement in food science, analyzing water chemistry data using graphs, and computing ratios and rates related to population dynamics and carrying capacity.
Students apply life, earth, and environmental science concepts across all units, including investigating plant cell structure and function, photosynthesis, and cellular respiration; studying genetics and heredity through Punnett squares and DNA extraction; analyzing ecosystems, food webs, and population dynamics; conducting water chemistry investigations; and examining the roles of organisms in natural systems and the impacts of human activity on the environment.
Career readiness, life literacies, and key skills are embedded throughout all units. Students explore careers in agriculture, food science, natural resource management, animal science, agribusiness, and veterinary science; develop personal finance and budgeting skills through agribusiness activities; use technology tools to research and present information; and apply critical thinking, collaboration, and communication skills in hands-on and project-based contexts.
Formative Assessments
- Observations during flower exploration and design activities
- Journals documenting biodiversity transect data
- Pair and share discussions on design principles
- Self-evaluations of floral arrangements and designs
- Group work on landscaping contest planning
Summative Assessment
Landscaping design project with budget calculations, floral arrangement portfolio, plant collection with proper scientific labeling, biodiversity reports
Benchmark Assessment
— not configured —
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate understanding through a guided picture sort or matching task to identify flower types and characteristics, or by explaining their landscaping design choices verbally to the teacher rather than in written form. Visual supports such as labeled plant photo cards, simplified budget templates with pre-filled amounts, and provided scientific name labels may be used during plant collection and specimen activities.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
Students may benefit from graphic organizers that scaffold the relationship between plant characteristics, design principles, and landscaping decisions, reducing the cognitive load of holding multiple concepts at once. For hands-on tasks such as creating floral arrangements or plant pressings, breaking the process into clearly numbered steps with visual models of the expected outcome supports independent completion. Budget-based design work can be supported by providing simplified calculation templates and allowing oral explanation of design choices in place of extended written responses. Journals documenting biodiversity data may include pre-formatted recording sheets with labeled sections to support organization and reduce barriers to capturing field observations.
Section 504
Extended time should be available for the landscaping design project and biodiversity reports, particularly where budget calculations and written analysis are required. Preferential seating during outdoor transect activities and reduced-distraction workspace during design and labeling tasks support sustained focus. Students who experience fatigue or attention challenges benefit from chunked work sessions with clear checkpoints during multi-step projects such as the plant collection and portfolio.
ELL / MLL
Visual supports such as labeled diagrams of flower parts, plant categories, and design principles help bridge content vocabulary with comprehension, and a running word bank specific to horticulture and ecology should be available throughout the unit. Directions for field and design activities should be given in short, clear steps, and students should be invited to retell instructions in their own words before beginning. Home language resources, bilingual plant identification apps, or picture-based field guides can support species identification during transect work, making the science accessible while students continue developing English proficiency.
At Risk (RTI)
Connecting new content to familiar plants, gardens, or green spaces from students' own neighborhoods provides a meaningful entry point into horticulture and biodiversity concepts. Complexity in the landscaping design and biodiversity report can be adjusted so students focus on a smaller number of plants or design elements, ensuring they demonstrate understanding of core concepts before expanding scope. Frequent check-ins during multi-step projects help students stay on track and experience early success, which builds confidence for the more open-ended creative and scientific tasks in this unit.
Gifted & Talented
Students ready for greater depth can explore the ecological relationships within their biodiversity transect data, such as analyzing how plant diversity correlates with soil type, light exposure, or human land use patterns. The landscaping design project offers opportunities to research sustainable horticulture practices, native plant selection, or pollinator habitat design, pushing beyond aesthetics into environmental science and systems thinking. Students may also explore the formal conventions of botanical illustration or scientific herbarium documentation, connecting their plant collection to real-world scientific practice and expanding their understanding of how knowledge is recorded and shared across disciplines.