This is meant as an introductory activity to show that life exists everywhere on Earth and also bring to mind some of the work done on habitats in Gr. 4-6. You can also use it to assess what learners understand by the term 'life'. For example, do they only identify animals as life, and forget that plants are also living organisms? Learners have not yet been exposed much to microorganisms and so might not identify these as life forms.

The answers to this activity are summarised in the subsequent text. In order to get learners to first think about the answers and discuss them without just reading them up in the text, perhaps get them to first take notes in a separate notebook or on scrap paper and have the class discussion before opening the workbooks and allowing them to then take down some notes.

When groups are finished discussing their most important requirements, let groups share their lists with the other groups and have a class discussion. List their answers on the board and make a tick for each one that is repeated - for example Food/ Oxygen/ Water might be repeated so each time it repeats make a tick next to it. This way they will quickly be able to see which requirements are most commonly repeated in the class. Learners might identify 'Food' rather than energy. Remind them that they also have to think about the plants which do not need to eat food. So ask the learners what term they could use as a more general term for food? This links back to nutrition in the seven life processes. The answer is that living things need a source of energy. If learners do not come up with the fact that living things need 'favourable/good/optimal temperatures', ask them some leading questions such as: 'Do you think the space station needs to be heated or cooled? Why? Will the humans and plants be able to survive at the temperature it is on the Moon? ' etc.

Start growing seedlings at the beginning of the term in the first lesson. A suggestion is to break the class up into groups and assign each group a different requirement to investigate. For example, one group should test whether water is needed, one group should test whether light is needed, one group should test the favourable temperature. Each group should also conduct a control so that they can all attempt to get seed to germinate.

'To find out what plants need to grow'. (An aim MUST start with 'To find out / To determine / To see if .. etc. This is different from a scientific question like 'What do plants need to grow?')

Learner-dependent answer. The hypothesis should include a prediction about the need for soil, light, water and the favourable temperature. For example: 'The plant will grow best in full sunlight, less in the shade, and not at all in full darkness.'

Stress to the learners that dependent variables should be measured using NUMBERS as far as possible, as this leads to tables and graphs. They should avoid subjective evaluations like it 'looks good' or 'feels nice'. This is not science.

Ask learners if they can think of any other variables that need to be kept the same in this example. They might think of things like the starting weight of the people should be the same, they should be the same sex, same age, they should both be healthy and not sick etc.

You, the teacher, can decide how you want to conduct this investigation. Perhaps learners can just assess whether it germinates or not, or they can look at how tall the plant grows, how many leaves it grows, etc. In most cases, the seeds probably will not germinate and grow if put in a cupboard or fridge or not given any water. So the best test is just to see whether it germinates or not.

The above questions give learners the opportunity to reflect on their variables and control groups. As Gr. 7s might not have had a chance to work with these concepts it is imperative that you spend time explaining why a control group is required and why only one variable be changed in each of the plants. Use the above example of testing whether eating too much sugar makes you put on weight, so that learners can then apply what you discuss about the example to this investigation.

As groups are discussing their design, go around and check that they are on the right path and discuss it with them and provide help. Help learners to find ways that they can test the requirement, especially if they are looking at a favourable temperature. Perhaps you have a fridge that learners could put the seeds in? (However, remember to take into account whether the plants will receive light in the fridge). Find a suitable spot in the classroom for the control group plants, perhaps on a windowsill with light. How many seeds will the learners use for each experimental condition? Is one seed enough? What can go wrong if only one seed is used?

A suggestion is to give learners some options for materials for germinating the seeds. For example, they could either use cotton wool, or newspaper, or soil. But, whatever they use, it must be the same in the control and test plants within one group. It does not matter if different groups do different things. This should actually be encouraged.

Learners also need to think about how they are going to record their results before starting the investigation. If they are just seeing whether plants germinate or not, then perhaps they can draw a table. If they are going to be measuring how much the plants grow, then they will need a table for this, and they will then need to draw a graph. If they are measuring the growth of seedlings, a suggestion is to use string to measure out the height, and then to measure the length of the string on a ruler.

Learner-dependent answer. (Some examples of the types of tables learners can draw are shown below. They might need help with this and you could draw these on the board. Learners could also record the results of each other's investigations as well.)

Table to show whether plants germinated or not

If the learners have included a number of seeds in each test group/ condition, they may want to express the result as numbers rather, or as a percentage of seeds that germinated.

Table to show growth of seedlings over time in light and in dark

Learner-dependent answer. An example of the type of line graph which could be drawn, using the information in the second table is given below. Time will be along the independent x-axis. The height of the plants is the dependent variable and this goes along the y-axis. Both the test plants and the control plants can then be plotted on the same graph to compare the growth between the two groups. Ensure that the intervals are equal along each of the axes. On each axis the interval between points must represent an increase of the same amount! (E.g. 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 etc. ) However, the intervals on the x-axis and the y-axis can be different in order to suit the data. For example you may use an interval of 1 on the x-axis to represent number of days, but an interval of 5 mm on the y-axis to represent change in height.