Parts of a Plant and Their Functions

The same flowering plant as the base page stands on the left of this 2nd grade page, this time with five orange numbered tags: 1 on the stem, 2 on a seed inside the pod, 3 on the flower, 4 on a leaf and 5 on the roots. On the right, five jobs are written in plain words, each with a dashed box: can grow into a new plant; makes food for the plant from sunlight; takes in water from the soil; holds the plant up tall; calls bees to come and visit it. The child finds the part that does each job and writes its tag number in the box.

This is the step from naming to explaining. Knowing that a leaf is called a leaf is not the same as knowing it makes the plant's food, and second graders are ready to link each structure to what it does. The jobs are written without any part names, so the child has to reason from the description to the diagram. Pollination appears in its simplest form, a flower calling bees to visit, which sets up the flower face at grade 3; ask children how a flower might call a bee, and color and scent will come up on their own.

One sheet, five jobs, five numbers. It is shorter than the base page and more demanding, so give it once the parts are secure. A good follow-up is to act the jobs out: roots drink, the stem stands tall, leaves reach for the sun. The parts of a flower face zooms in on the one part this page treats as a whole. In NGSS terms this reaches toward 4-LS1-1, so it is a stretch for many second grade classes.