Pollination and Fertilisation

We used our sciPads to find out about pollination and fertilisation. We also had to think about how non-flowering plants reproduce.

Flowers - Introduction

Designing a Fair Test

Today was the first day of preparing our investigation on the effect of plant nutrient additives on plant growth.

STEP ONE: Method Described (Multistructural)

1. 180-190g of strained soil is weighed and added to a biodegradable punnet.
2. Three 2cm deep wells are made in the soil (evenly spaced out).
3. One sugar snap pea seed is put into each well. The wells are covered with soil.
4. 20mL of tap water is measured in a measuring cylinder then added evenly to the top of the soil.
5. The class's punnets are put in trays and placed in the window of the resource room.
6. 20mL of tap water will be added every Monday and every Friday.
7. The height of the plants will be recorded on Monday every week for 6 weeks.

We have yet to decide how to investigate the effect of the plant nutrient additives we have purchased - this is tomorrow's job!

STEP TWO: Variables Analysed (Relational)

Mr Nicoll identified some key variables that were controlled by using this method. We then discussed why it was important to control these variables:

Completing this HOTMap is our homework tonight.

OUR RESULTS

Cool Onion Cell Photo

This is a photo I took of the Onion Cells that we were studying under the microscopes today. I managed to snap this shot with my iPhone 4S.

Ecology Assignments

Over the past few weeks, the class have been doing an inquiry about a New Zealand animal. They needed to find out about its habitat, adaptations, place in a food web, and about its chances of survival. The following links are some of the websites/blogs which were made. Other students presented their findings as: written reports, posters, speeches, or on display boards.

http://nzbluepenguin.weebly.com/

http://newzealandweka.weebly.com/

http://redstagnz.weebly.com/

http://nzsnapper.blogspot.co.nz/

http://brittanyfindlayfantail.blogspot.co.nz/

http://blueduckstac.weebly.com

Food Chains

Today we learned about food chains, so we could use this information to help us with our Ecology Assignments.

Food chains represent the energy flow and feeding relationships between a group of organisms in a particular habitat or ecosystem:

All food chains start with a producer. They are able to make their own food using sunlight, carbon dioxide and water; this process is called photosynthesis.

Adaptations

As part of our assignment, we need to evaluate the adaptations of our New Zealand/Aotearoa organism. Today, we learned about adaptations and have to finish this work for homework: