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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Arizona Plant Booklet: An Introduction to Arizona Plants & Cacti

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Students explore variety of plants & cacti in their Arizona community by collecting samples and taking photographs. Can be adapted to other areas.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Habitats: Cactus Hotel

For Teachers K - 2nd
A reading of Brenda Z. Guiberson’s, Cactus Hotel, launches a study of animal habitats. Working with parent volunteers or teacher aides, groups travel outside the classroom to select a habitat, take digital pictures, and incorporate the...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

How to Grow a Cactus Indoors

For Teachers Pre-K - 2nd
Students plant a cacti. In this desert plants lesson, students identify the needs of a plant and meet those needs by planting and caring for cactus.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Genetic Analysis

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students formulate a hypothesis regarding the validity of the current status of the Arizona Hedgehog cactus as a distinct variety of cactus. They design a procedure to isolate DNA from the tissue of plants, given a list of chemicals and...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Cactus Wheel

For Teachers 2nd - 5th
Students explore plant biology by conducting field experiments outside of class. In this desert plant lesson, students discuss how cacti thrive in such dry climates and how dense their populations are. Students utilize action cards, a...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Arizona Hedgehog Cactus: Endangered Species or not?: Biology, Plants

For Teachers All
In this lesson plan students will study the: "Classification of Echinocereus triglochidiatus and Geographical Ranges of its Varieties." Students read background material and scientific literature to analyze the cactus populations and...
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Lesson Plan
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Desert People and the Saguaro

For Teachers 4th - 5th Standards
The saguaro is the focus of an examination of the importance of this stately cactus to the indigenous people in the Sonoran Desert.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Desert Water Keepers

For Teachers 3rd
Third graders identify ways that cactus plants survive in the desert. They distinguish between water acquisition and water conservation and create their own plant that could survive in a desert climate.
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Lesson Plan
Desert Discoveries

Built for the Desert

For Teachers 3rd
The saguaro cactus has an amazing ability to survive in a harsh environment. Learners identify the many adaptations for desert life that the saguaro employs. They look at each part of the saguaro and determine what role it plays in the...
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Lesson Plan
Desert Discovery

Saguaro Parts

For Teachers 3rd
Young biologists identify the basic structures of a saguaro cactus. They study the functions of each of the structures, and label them on a picture of a saguaro cactus embedded in the plan. This simple, and easy-to-implement...
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Lesson Plan
Desert Discoveries

Who Depends on the Saguaro?

For Teachers Pre-K - 6th
Young scientists design a picture of a saguaro cactus that shows the cactus and some of the animals and plants that interact with it. There are many of these special relationships between plants and animals of the Sonoran Desert. Your...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Rain Sticks

For Teachers K - 8th
Artists of all ages construct a three-dimensional form and fill it with rice to make gentle, percussive sounds. They discover that Native South American tribesmen would harvest dead branches from cactus plants, fill them with small...
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Lesson Plan
Desert Discovery

Saguaro Seasons

For Teachers 3rd
Elementary schoolers take a look at how the saguaro cactus adapts to the four seasons of the year. This amazing plant has distinct flowering and fruiting cycles within the summer season, and other cycles during the other seasons. Your...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Invasion of the (Cactus) Booty Snatchers

For Teachers 10th - 12th
Students, in groups of four,identify and analyze relationships among birds within a population, a community and an urban ecosystem. They fill out, while they're completing their experiments, a Populations of Birds Student Data Sheet.
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Lesson Plan
Desert Discovery

Life Cycle of the Saguaro

For Teachers 3rd
Third graders make books which illustrate the growth and development of a saguaro cactus from its beginnings as a seed all the way through its death. They trace the life cycle of the saguaro, identify each of the stages in its life, and...
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Lesson Plan
PBS

Blue Ribbon Readers: Determining Important Ideas

For Teachers K - 5th
Brenda Z. Guiberson’s nonfiction book, Cactus Hotel, launches a series of activities that model for readers how to determine the main idea in a passage.  Class members engage in an online interactive game to test their understanding. The...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Plant Diversity and Distribution

For Teachers 3rd - 12th
Students construct a defined plot on school grounds and observed patterns in plant life. They count trees, shrubs, cacti and record on a data sheet. They compare data and generate a plant diversity overlook for their school.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Endangered Species Problem

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Young scholars list the morphological characters used to identify the cacti in the field, and describe the associated problems in using these characters for identification. They draw the geographical ranges of the varieties of species...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Science: Putting Down Roots

For Teachers 4th
Fourth graders, in small groups, observe plants and note their characteristics. After drawing pictures of the plants, including their roots systems, they hypothesize in which environments the plants would best thrive. Finally, 4th...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Desert Water Keepers

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students experiment with models to find how plants survive in the desert environment.  In this plant mechanisms activity, students make leaf models to understand how leaves conserve water. Students collect cactus in bags and observe the...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Archaeology of Cactus Ruin

For Teachers 9th - 11th
Students simulate archaeologists by excavating a paper site. In groups, they use a sampling strategy to determine information about the people who lived at the site.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

"Publication" of Scientific Papers And Posters

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students create and display a scientific poster in the same format that scientists use at a research symposium. They compile data and make conclusions about the classification of the Arizona Hedgehog Cactus as an endangered species. ...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

DNA Isolation from Plant Tissue

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Young scholars perform an experiment to extract and observe DNA from plant Tissue. They read about the procedure and relate it to the procedure used to isolate DNA from an endangered plant species. This is lesson three in a nine lesson...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Pour and Load Agarose Gels

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Learners practice pouring an agarose gel and loading the DNA into the wells to perform a genetic analysis of variation among individuals and between populations. They electrophorese the gel overnight.

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