How Plants Adapt to the Environment

Objectives:

• Students will understand what an adaptation is.

• Students will be able to describe how various plants have adapted to their environments.

Suggested Grades:

4th Grade - 5th Grade - 6th Grade

Lesson Procedure:

Print the reading comprehension worksheet passage and questions (see below).

Students should read the passage silently, then answer the questions. Teachers may also use the text as part of a classroom lesson plan.

Lesson Excerpt:

There are plants almost everywhere in the world. There are plants that can live in all kinds of different environments and climates. They grow in the dry, hot dessert, in the rainforests and high up on mountains. Plants live where there is little sun, where there is little rain and even under water. Each type of plant is able to survive in its environment because it has developed special adaptations for the place where it grows.

For example, it may seem unlikely that plants could survive in the desert, where there is not a lot of rainfall and it is often very hot. But there are many plants growing in deserts. In the Sonoran Desert of California and Arizona, there is a plant called the barrel cactus that has adapted very well to the environment.

Continued...