Pollination Game
Creator: Christopher Jernigan
Title of Lesson: Pollination Game
Intended Grade Level(s): 5th-7th Grade
Main Objective(s): Get students to better understand the relationships between pollinators and
flowers.
* It is highly suggested that this lesson is conducted after students have had exposure to animal
relationship patterns such as mutualism and parasitism, as well as exposure to plant development.
Suggested Materials:
 Opaque plastic or Styrofoam cups with plastic lids
 Water
 2-4 different colored food coloring
 Cotton balls
 Washable paint or ink
 Plastic transfer pipettes or straws
 Clear plastic cups
 Graduated cylinder, beakers, or vials
 Flowering plants that produce a visible fruit or seed (tomato, strawberry, soy bean), some with
fruit and others with flowers
 Paper
 Marker/pencil
 Whiteboard, blackboard
 Pictures of various novel pollinator/flower pairings
Arizona State Science Standards Addressed:
Grade 4: Concept 1, 3, 4
Grades 5-7: Concept 4- Communication
Concept 3- Populations of Organisms in an ecosystem: PO2
Common Core Standards Addressed:
MS-LS2-2 Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across
multiple ecosystems
MS-LS1-4 Use argument based on empirical evidence and scientific reasoning to support an explanation
for how characteristic animal behaviors and specialized plant structures affect the probability of
successful reproduction of animals and plants respectively
MS-LS4-4 Construct an explanation based on evidence that describes how genetic variations of traits in a
population increase some individuals’ probability of surviving and reproducing in a specific environment.
Suggested Supplemental Teacher Resources – References/ Websites:
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/index.shtml
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0602.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollination
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9C85EFB1521585EB
Lesson Plan Description:
Students will be playing a game acting as a pollinator. They will then explore flowers and the benefits
each receive in these ecological relationships. Finally they will elaborate these ideas and design their
own flowers to attract novel pollinators.
Engage
Purpose: Engage and look closely at pollinators and plants.
Materials:
Flowering plants that produce a visible fruit or seed (tomato, strawberry, soy bean), some
with fruit and others with flowers
Instructional Sequence:
1. Bring the plants you brought in and have them look at them and write down any
observations they make for about 5 minutes. If they are struggling with what to
write, ask them about the difference between the two plants focus on the
reproductive areas of the plants. Let the students take the flowers and fruits off
and look at them and compare them.
2. Ask the students to share their observations with the rest of the class.
3. Lead them into discussing the flowers and the fruit. Why do they have flowers?
What are the fruit? How were these produced? Where did the fruit come from?
Leave open ended for now, as this will be revisited later in the lesson.
4. Show a video of the pollinators or bring in pollinators to the classroom and ask
the students what they think they are doing. (example video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0G-oTU1J5A)
** (Alternatively you can schedule a time for the students to visit a local botanical
garden or school garden and ask these same questions).
Safety: Depending upon the plant that is brought in there could be allergy issues.
Ensure all students are safe to handle the plants. Soy bean could be an alternative that
is not common to have an allergy to.
Exploration
Purpose: Explore the plant and pollinator evolution by acting as ‘pollinators’ while
playing a game.
Materials:
Opaque plastic or Styrofoam cups with plastic lids
Water
2-4 different colored food coloring
cotton balls
Washable paint or ink
Plastic transfer pipettes or straws
spoons
Clear plastic cups
graduated cylinder, beakers, or vials
Instructional Sequence:
1. We will start off playing a pollination/foraging game. You will place out an array
of your basic non-descript flower cups with lids, which have one of 2-4 different
colored water in them (depending upon the number of students) with cotton
balls ringing the edge of the cups. Half of the cotton balls will have washable ink
on them(Fig. 1A).
2. Split the class into teams of 2-4 depending upon the number of students to match
the different colored water. Give them each a plastic pipette, straw, or spoon to
collect the water. Only one student can collect from a cup at a time, and students
are not allowed to talk during this time. You tell them their goal is to collect as
much of their color as they can in the set amount of time ~2-5 minutes depending
upon the size of the group and the distance to the cups. They will place their
collected colored water into their group’s storage cup.
3. Compare the volumes and color intensity within groups (there will be dilution of
color if students collected the wrong color etc.).
4. Now you will play the game again, however you will introduce new cup types.
Open cups so students can see the water inside, and open cups with different
colored flower petals again all with pollen cotton balls.
5. Once again play the game (step 2) and again compare the collected volume and
color intensity between groups and between rounds. **
**This game can be exaggerated to include sensory and other biases. You can use tinted
glasses to make certain colors more difficult to discern, or openings to prohibit collecting
‘nectar’ from certain cups.
Safety: Be sure to make sure students do not run, and that cups are secured to a surface
so that food coloring does not spill everywhere. It might be good to do this activity
outside or place down mats to avoid staining carpets, clothes, etc.
Explanation Purpose: Discussion to understand the connection between pollinator, plant and
development of fruit/seeds.
Materials: Paper, marker/pencil, whiteboard, blackboard
Instructional Sequence:
1. Present the data to the students from the engagement pollination game, which
was being prepared while they were exploring the flowers and fruit. They should
have experience being a pollinator and thinking as a “pollinator” and explored
and made connections between the fruit and flowers. Now discuss the cotton
balls some of the white ones should now have the ink on them from students
touching both. Suggested leading questions: Which cups had more cotton balls
‘pollinated’? Which did not? Did this correlate to how much ‘nectar’ the students
collected from them?
2. What do these cotton balls correlate to in plant development? Bring this back to
discussing their observations with the real plants. Ensure the students have made
the connection to pollination and that this is crucial for the plant to produce
seeds and new plants.
3. Ask questions: Now bring this all back to the game and again discuss: What time
did you do better in the game? Why? What did you get? What did the ‘flowers’
get? Why?
Extend/
Elaboration
Purpose: Extend current understanding by providing unique pollinator/flower pairings
examples. I’ve included some unique examples in the provided PowerPoint. The video
series on YouTube “sexual encounters of the floral kind” also has excellent examples.
Materials: Pictures of various novel pollinator/flower pairings: Fly pollinated,
mouse/vertebrate pollinators, classic insect pollination examples bees, and
Orchids/sexual mimics?
Instructional Sequence:
1. Now that the students are thinking about flowers and pollinators, ask if they can
think of any examples of pairings? Ask them to think in groups.
2. As the groups are discussing, provide pictures and descriptions of different
pollinators and flowers that they pollinate and have them try to pair them
together and discuss why they think they might pollinate the flowers (what are
the pollinators being attracted to?) (Fig 2.)
3. If you have the resources and means you can provide the students with some
sensory experiences to describe these pairings. For example provide the color
picture of the flower and a sample of what they might smell like (rotting meat and
red colored with skatole for fly pollinated, sweet and bright colors for bees, etc.),
4. Bring this back together and have them share their ideas and discuss as a class
the pairings and why these flowers might attract these pollinators. If there is
time and you have already discussed various animal relationships such as
mutualism, parasitism, etc. You can also discuss the costs and benefits of these
examples
Evaluation
Purpose: Design a flower for humans, popular cartoon character (spongebob, teenage
mutant turtle, pokemon, or something more natural? Ideally something creative, which
they can relate to) or themselves to pollinate as a way of finalizing connections between
needs of flower and pollinator. This
Materials: Paper and markers/pencils
Description of a new pollinator
Instructional Sequence:
1. Provide the students with a description of a new pollinator (could be humans or
any other strange set of traits you can come up with feel free to get creative).
Descriptions will need to be sufficient that they are provided at least locomotion
mechanism, diet, and sensory structures/ capabilities. The descriptions need to
be sufficient such that they can design a flower to attract and this new pollinator.
Example descriptions can be found in appendix (Fig. 3).
2. Ask students as groups or individually to design a flower to attract their pollinator
3. Share their designs and pollinators with the rest of the class, and ask them if they
can come up with any improvements as well.
Possible Alternatives and Troubleshooting:


If you are short on time or have periods less than an hour, I would suggest only doing one
round of the pollination game outside.
For older students (grades 8 and above) you could replace the game with a model or video on
pollination. I would also suggest adding a research portion in the extend/elaborate section to
see if they can find the strangest pollinator/flower pairing.
Appendix
Fig. 1. Potential pollination game flower designs. All flowers have cotton balls (oblong shapes on the top
of each of the cups), which will act as the stamens/pistils in this exercise. I attached these with
toothpicks and plasticine clay. All of the cups should be filled with a colored liquid, which each team
should be attempting to collect. A) The most elaborate flower which has petals and lid in an opaque cup.
The petal shape or color should match or correspond to the colored liquid on the inside of the cup. B) An
opaque cup with cotton balls and a lid. This cup should be the most difficult to collect from as there are
no external cues to let the students know what colored liquid is on the inside. C) The most simple
design, an open clear cup with cotton balls. The students should very easily see what color liquid is in
this cup.
PowerPoint presentation available on the website, which includes images you can use for all sections of
this lesson plan.