Plants - Assessment

The Year Three Summative Assessment on Plants is a comprehensive evaluation designed to gauge students' understanding of plant biology and their functions. The assessment begins with a matching exercise where students must connect different parts of a plant—roots, stem, leaves, and flower—to their respective functions, such as transporting water and nutrients, taking minerals from the soil, photosynthesis and storage of food, and housing reproductive structures. This is followed by a question about the process of a plant making its food, which is known as photosynthesis, and what essential element is taken from the air to facilitate this process.

The assessment continues with a series of true or false statements, allowing students to demonstrate their knowledge of general plant facts, such as leaf color variation, tree leaf shedding, plant stems, flower presence in all species, pollination, seed germination, and the parts involved in pollination. Students are then asked to identify the name of the pores found in leaves and explain their function and adaptive changes during drought conditions, as well as their usual location on the leaf. The concept of transpiration is also explored. The assessment includes a practical understanding of plant growth through an experiment where students analyze data on stem growth with different liquids, identifying the most beneficial liquid for growth and discussing the possible reasons behind the results. Finally, the students reflect on the importance of space for plant growth and the consequences of growing plants in the absence of light.