Handbook:Example 3 Identification of leaves

1 Overview

Learning on how to identify plants by their leaves

2 School level

Primary school and 5-6th grade

3 Identification key

Including the set of plants that you intend to identify with your students.

4 Further resources

• Identification Quiz: “The main characters of plant leaves”, produced by the department of life sciences at the University of Trieste: [To be linked…]
• Learning unit on identification FIM / FAU: [Ilias Learning Unit]
  • [1] What you should know to use the Key to trees and shrubs
• Quiz on identification of trees FIM / FAU: [Ilias Test]
  • [2] Test: Do you know everything to identify trees

5 Preparation

You need to collect different types of leaves, eventually you’ll find enough sources in the school garden or in the surroundings of the school. Check how much you know on the characters of plant leaves by doing the Quiz “The main character of plant leaves”. In case you find out that you have some knowledge gaps you can do the learning unit on identification . Access to computers for the web-based Quiz at the end of the class. (alternative ask your students to perform it at home (as homework) and let them report on their experiences and scores in the next class).

6 Background information

Leaves are highly heterogeneous: Once students examine the leaves of plant they are going to find out that they are very heterogeneous. Changes can be due to age of a plant, damages. So students can start to examine different leaves of a species and try to identify common characteristics they find out. They classify by themselves and develop a stronger perception; they learn to look carefully and to perceive the difference open their eyes they reflect.

Students sample the features of a certain population and for instances build up a model of the leaf they found and afterwards compare with the leaves in the book.

After this first phase you ca move on to the identification of a set of plants based on the characteristics of the leaves. In this phase you let students explain the what they found out and complete it with the technical terms

At the end students can do the Quiz on “The main characters of plant leaves” provided by the KeyToNature project.