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Hello Erica,

I think some fun and educational activities that a teacher can do with her elementary students is to label the parts of a plant. You can choose to unscramble, cut and paste, match, fill in the blank, etc. I think it is important to find creative activities that also include hands-on and this way keep the student's interest high. You can also choose to use 3D objects to represent the different parts of a plant (stem, leaf, root, seed). Some material that you can use for this is yarn, straws, real seeds, and cardboard or construction paper to make leaves. I think doing this will be fun and help the students learn the different parts of plants. Hope this was helpful! 

Do you guys think that it would be beneficial to have a live plant in the classroom? (: 

Hello! There are various ways to show elementary students the parts of a plant. One way you can show your students is by physically showing a stem, roots, leaves, and the actual plants. Although, I would recommend using a plant that was either slowly dying or doesn't mind cutting it to show each part to your students. Another way is printing a handout where the students would need to label each part of the plant. One last method would be to have the students build each part by using playdough as it could be a hands-on experiment.

Hello Erica!
I believe a great hands-on experience that you can implement with the students is to collect real flowers and then move to the classroom where together as a class will carefully 'dissect' the flower and name each part. By doing this, students are able to see it in real-life and soon will be able to know the parts of a plant further in life. When done with the dissection, you can either ask students to glue those parts to their scientific journal with the labels or simply toss it out, preferably let them save it in their science journals to keep it for future reference. 

Sylvia, 

I think it is important to set expectations with your students beforehand. Let the students know what you expect to happen during the lesson behavior wise. Ive seen teachers using doorbell's in their classrooms as attention getters; I think that is neat. Have call backs that the students are familar with and will respond to when you want to get their attention. With Kinder, it is going to be loud and messy, but the students are learning and having fun at the same time.