To assess students' understanding of a particular investigation they conducted.

After students investigate their seed inquiry questions by performing experiments, they are asked to explain in writing what they learned from one particular investigation.

We asked students to: "Think about one of the seed questions that you or the class investigated. Tell what happened and explain what you learned about seeds and how they grow."

We evaluate these written responses to assess students' understanding of the particular investigation and inquiry in general.

For this assessment piece, students were asked to explain what they had learned from their seed experiments.

Most students focused on the question, What do plants need to grow? 

• Their answers ranged from nothing to everything and they struggled from there.

• Many kids stated that water, air, sun/heat, soil/ a place to grow were all necessary for growth and food production. 

• Some said that the seed was also necessary since it contains food for the root and stem to grow and makes plant life possible. 

Other questions that a few students considered were: Can agar plates replace soil as a growth medium? Can a plant that is grown in the dark and is not green produce food?

Many students thought that:

• seeds are needed to grow plants.

• light is needed. Too much or too little light could be a problem. Seeds grown in the dark could grow but had no green color needed to produce food. The seeds in the dark had yellow leaves and crooked stems. Students thought that these plants probably wouldn't produce well. Some students felt that they wouldn't bear food since they weren't green.

• too much water slows growth or causes the seed to become mushy, break, split, or disintegrate.

• agar plates might be used to grow plants. Could the agar plates replace the soil as a growth medium? Would the agar be adequate for the seed to produce roots and shoots and a plant eventually?

• the embryo is essential for seeds to grow and produce a plant.

NOTE: There was much variation in our students' responses to this question. We have to wonder if the brevity or lack of depth in answers had to do with the timing of this assessment piece. This piece was written on one of the last few days of school. The written answers often differed from what a particular student had contributed in class discussions or had been documented in small group discussions. Granted, writing was an issue for some children but we had higher hopes for others who didn't really write what we know they knew, based on their earlier contributions in class discussions.