Plants:
Carbon, Energy and Sustainability
Field Trip Logistics
If your program is scheduled at 9:30 am, your instructor
will meet you at the entrance lobby. If your program is
scheduled at 11:30 am, your class will meet their
instructor at the laboratory on the 3rd floor next to the
Naturalist Center.
This program can be delivered simultaneously in Spanish and
English or Spanish only. For more information, please contact
rockprogram@calacademy.org.
Length of Program:
70 minutes
Program Objectives:




Be able to describe the role plants play in the movement of carbon throughout our planet.
Understand how plants become fossil fuels via the carbon sedimentation cycle.
Know that excess carbon dioxide in the air impacts San Francisco, and the rest of the world.
Become inspired to change one behavior that results in lower carbon outputs.
Program Summary
The program begins with the class brainstorming what plants need to grow, focusing in on carbon
dioxide as the important compound plants use to increase their mass. Working in pairs, students
investigate how plants take up carbon dioxide by creating an imprint of the leaf and using microscopes
to find structures that might allow carbon dioxide inside the leaf. By performing a skit, students learn
that plants keep the carbon from carbon dioxide and release the oxygen back into the air and discover
plants use the carbon as a building block for growth.
Via storytelling and sensory investigations of peat, lignite and coal specimens, students learn how
plants can become fossil fuels. Led by the instructor, students consider all the human sources of
carbon dioxide and learn the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has changed over time and
is responsible for climate change. Finally, students find ways that they can lessen their own use of
fossil fuels.
Connections to the Next Generation Science Standards
Science and Engineering Practices
Planning and Carrying Out Investigations
Connections to Activity
Disciplinary Core Idea
4 LS1.A: Structure and Function
Connections to Activity
•
•
Conduct an investigation collaboratively
to produce data to serve as the basis for
evidence.
Plants and animals have both internal
and external structures that serve
various functions in growth.
Working in pairs, students prepare the leaf
specimen by making a nail polish imprint of the
leaf’s surface. Using microscopes, students
examine their prepared leaf imprint and practice
their scientific drawing skills by recording
observations.
Using role play, students learn that plants take in
carbon dioxide through small pores on a leaf’s
surface that open and close, integrate carbon
into their cells and release oxygen back through
the same pores.
After sketching what they see when looking at
their imprint under the microscope, students
reflect on which structures might be the pores
they observed in the role play skit.
5LS1.C: Organization for Matter and Energy
Flow in Organisms
After watching a time-lapse video of plants
growing, students share their observations of
what plants need to grow. Instructors focus in on
carbon dioxide, which the plants take from the
air.
5LS2.B: Cycles of Matter and Energy
Transfer in Ecosystems
From the role-playing skit and investigation,
students understand how gases cycle through
the environment via plants and animals.
•
•
Plants acquire their material for growth
chiefly from air and water.
Matter cycles between the air and soil
and among plants, animals, and
microbes as these organisms live and
die. Organisms obtain gases, and water,
from the environment, and release waste
matter (gas, liquid, or solid) back into
the environment.
Through instructor-led discussion, students
explore where the accumulated carbon goes
when the plant dies.
4ESS3.A: Natural Resources
Via storytelling and sensory investigations of
peat, lignite and coal, instructors lead students
through the process of how the carbon in a plant
can become fossil fuels.
5ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems
Instructors lead students through a discussion of
how humans use fossil fuels and how burning
these carbon-rich fuels releases carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere and affects us. Students
make predictions of which human activities
release the most carbon dioxide and then find
ways they can lessen their own use of fossil fuels
5PS1.A: Structure and Properties of Matter
The class brainstorm on what plants need to
grow. Focusing on carbon dioxide, students
discuss why it is invisible, who uses it, and how
plants take the carbon from the gas and use it as
a building block for growth.
•
•
•
•
Energy and fuels that humans use are
derived from natural sources, and their
use affects the environment in multiple
ways.
Human activities in agriculture, industry,
and everyday life have had major effects
on the land, vegetation, streams, ocean,
air, and even outer space.
Matter of any type can be subdivided
into particles that are too small to see,
but even then the matter still exists and
can be detected by other means.
The amount (weight) of matter is
conserved when it changes form, even in
transitions in which it seems to vanish
During the skit, students take on roles to act out
how the mass of carbon dioxide in the air is
transferred to plants for growth.
Crosscutting Concepts
Structure and Function
Connections to Activity
Cause and Effect
Students consider all the human sources of
carbon dioxide and learn the amount of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere has changed over
time and is partially responsible for climate
change.
•
•
Substructures have shapes and parts
that can serve functions.
Cause and effect relationships are
identified and used to explain change.
Through the imprint investigation and skit,
students discover structures on the leaf’s
surface and learn about their function.
Correlated California State Standards
Grade 5
Physical Sciences
1h. Students know living organisms and most materials are composed of just a few elements.
Life Sciences
2f. Students know plants use carbon dioxide (CO2) and energy from sunlight to build molecules of
sugar and release oxygen.