Use the science to investigate a real source, explain the evidence, and communicate a defensible conclusion. The guide supplies the actual reading, data, task, and chosen level before the unit begins.
| Strand | Required evidence |
|---|---|
| History, Reading, Writing | Use an approved source in context and a student-authored response. Separate the original evidence from later explanations; do not force a single-hero story. |
| Geography and ethics | Include location, social context, or ethical trade-offs where they genuinely support the scientific question. |
| Elective extensions | Choose additional depth in data, technology, economics, or art. Extensions do not replace the core work. |
| Quantitative science | Use the unit's mathematical lane at the agreed level. Supply units, denominators, and model conditions; required science is assessed as science. |
Integration is reported separately and cannot lower the science grade or block a science demonstration pass. Science and practical criteria determine that pass.
Use the same approved task in both formats. The web guide explains the source, data, assumptions, student work, and evidence checklist; this packet is its portable summary, not a different assignment.
Use the web guide's approved unit assignment.
| Unit | Botany big idea | Integration anchor |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Plant Cells & Tissues | Plants are built from specialized cells organized into dermal, ground, and vascular tissues. | Robert Hooke coining the word “cell” in 1665 from a sliver of cork — pair with The Cabaret of Plants; the microscope opens a hidden world. |
| 02 Roots, Stems & Leaves | Relate organ structure to function and measured form. | Compare an approved historical source with measured leaf patterns; test rather than assume a universal Fibonacci spiral. |
| 03 Photosynthesis & Plant Energy | Plants convert light, water, and carbon dioxide into sugar and oxygen. | Priestley and Ingenhousz discovering that plants “restore” air — trace it to the oxygen we breathe and to carbon and climate today. |
| 04 Water & Nutrient Transport | Connect transport, nutrition, and microbial partners. | Use Hales and modern nutrition readings with the assigned water-potential, uptake, and conditional partner data. |
| 05 Plant Growth & Hormones | Interacting signals regulate growth, stress, and defense. | Compare historical seedling observations with modern models and the normal-care record; growth does not directly measure a hormone. |
| 06 Flowers, Seeds & Fruit | Connect reproduction with inheritance and breeding. | Use defined Mendelian crosses, selection response, and ploidy tasks with their separate assumptions. |
| 07 Plant Diversity & Classification | Plants are grouped by shared traits — mosses, ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms. | Carl Linnaeus and the birth of binomial naming — students build a dichotomous key and argue how a shared naming system changed science. |
| 08 Plants, Ecosystems & People | Plants anchor food webs and shape human history, agriculture, and climate. | The Green Revolution and Norman Borlaug’s wheat, or the Irish potato famine — how a single crop can feed or fail a nation. Pair with The Botany of Desire. |
Use a defined cross and an approved Mendel source. Tt × Tt predicts 3:1 phenotypes under complete dominance; it does not guarantee observed counts. Complete the core or assigned advanced practice with labeled synthetic data. Advanced work states independence, expected counts, and chi-square assumptions; failing to reject a model does not prove it true. Connect the model to the flower's reproductive structures.
Math never drives a unit, but botany uses it constantly — always anchored to the observation or measurement at the bench. Here is the quantitative skill each unit actually uses, done inside the lab context rather than as a parallel curriculum.
| Unit | Applied math at the agreed level |
|---|---|
| 01 Plant Cells & Tissues | Sampled area, stomatal density, scale and surface-area/volume; fields from one plant are not independent plants. |
| 02 Roots, Stems & Leaves | Leaf area, organ allocation, and circular angles; compare a geometric hypothesis with observations rather than assuming a universal pattern. |
| 03 Photosynthesis & Plant Energy | Signed net exchange, gross-rate estimates under a respiration assumption, light-response graphs, and leaf-area normalization. |
| 04 Water & Nutrient Transport | Total water potential, normalized uptake, and four plant-microbe treatment means; distinguish proxy measurements and context-dependent effects. |
| 05 Plant Growth & Hormones | Plant-level repeated measurements, paired height change, missing-data handling, and stress-response trade-offs. Dates are not new biological replicates. |
| 06 Flowers, Seeds & Fruit | Specified crosses and expected counts; assigned chi-square, selection response, and chromosome-set arithmetic, with separate model assumptions. |
| 07 Plant Diversity & Classification | Dichotomous-key logic; trait tables; percentage and frequency counts. |
| 08 Plants, Ecosystems & People | GPP/NPP with matched units, irrigation per area versus yield, and constrained crop-system comparisons; a standing count is not a production rate. |
Students run the Punnett-square ratio inside the heredity lab, the transpiration rate inside the water-transport experiment, the surface-area-to-volume math inside the leaf lab. The number always means something because it is attached to a result they produced — never a worksheet detached from the botany.
Integration is its own strand. Track each unit’s integration level across the year — Developing, Proficient, or Mastery — separate from the science-mastery rubric. Record the evidence reference and date in the final column.
| Unit | Developing | Proficient | Mastery | Evidence / date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 Plant Cells & Tissues | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 02 Roots, Stems & Leaves | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 03 Photosynthesis & Plant Energy | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 04 Water & Nutrient Transport | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 05 Plant Growth & Hormones | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 06 Flowers, Seeds & Fruit | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 07 Plant Diversity & Classification | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
| 08 Plants, Ecosystems & People | ◯ | ◯ | ◯ | ______ |
A student who walks through all eight anchors finishes understanding that botany is how humans learned to read the living world, and that every term on the page was once a discovery someone fought for — the version of the subject a student keeps.