Imaginative Photosynthesis Lesson

Six months ago, as part of my induction process to clear my teacher credential, I had to have a mentor teacher observe me giving a lesson and provide feedback. From Science is WEIRD’s free Egan education workshops, which I’m a little obsessed with, I knew that I wanted to do a lesson that was a little different from a traditional lesson. Kieran Egan was an educational philosopher who spearheaded a form of education which he called Imaginative Education. Some argue this makes it sounds unserious, but in my mind, it just makes it sound fun. Would you like to do a boring lesson on photosynthesis? “Why, no, thank you. I think I’ll pass.” How about an imaginative lesson? “I’m listening…”

Honestly, I’m not sure if I did my Eganized lesson “correctly.” I’m trying to learn more about his model in my freetime, but I’m no expert in this. What I do know is that I used my imagination, I asked the kids to use theirs, and we all had a good time. The tools that I tried to use from Egan’s framework were storytelling, role-playing, emotional engagement, extremes, humor (because honestly, it was a little ridiculous), vivid imagery, riddles, the binary of life/death, and the heroic quality of saving the world from a super-villain. The kids that I gave my lesson to were a homeschool group between the ages of about 6 and 14. I did go through it a little fast and the lesson lasted about 20-ish minutes.

Initially, I was having trouble figuring out how to Eganize the lesson. The first step in creating a lesson using Egan’s framework is to figure out what’s wonderful about it. That part didn’t seem too hard, because photosynthesis is literally the reason why life on Earth exists. Without it, there wouldn’t be plants and the food chain would collapse fairly rapidly. We oxygen-dependent creatures eventually wouldn’t be able to breathe. But what do you do with that? I was stuck. Then, Brandon from Science is WEIRD suggested that I be a super villain with a photosynthesis off button. At 5’2″, I’m not physically very threatening and I smile constantly, so I didn’t think anyone would buy it, but that gave me the idea to pretend like we were trying together to defeat a supervillain with a photosynthesis off button.

I played around with AI and got it to make me a Photosynthesis Off button that turned out surprisingly well. I gathered clue images using both a royalty free website and AI when I couldn’t find what I wanted. I got the idea to make an official looking letter asking us to solve the case that I could pass around. The morning of the lesson, I had the idea to put everything in a manila envelope labeled TOP SECRET. Even my teenager got pretty into it. As we were driving to the lesson, he changed my ring tone to something that sounded very Mission-Impossible-ish and we worked out a code phrase for him to call me at a specific moment at the beginning of the lesson to get the ball rolling.

Overall, I think it went really well. There were around 15 to 20 kids and even the older ones were clearly amused. The feedback I received from my induction mentor was that all the kids seemed very engaged and nearly all of them actually spoke or contributed in some way. It probably helps that these were all homeschool kids that I know to some degree, so they were more or less willing to go along with my nonsense, but I think it’s fair to say we all had a good time and nearly everyone hopefully learned something.

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: 20 to 30 minutes, plus extra if you want to start a leaf collection
Difficulty: easy, but requires an adult to lead the child or group of children
Cost: Free printable

Materials

paper or device with screen
manila envelope (optional)
cup of water (optional)
leaf (optional)
flashlight (optional)

Free Printable

Photosynthesis Lesson – Complete Packet with Instructions

Photosynthesis Lesson – Just the Printables

Instructions

PART 1: SET THE SCENE – Print the printables packet or load it up on a tablet or other device if you are using technology to share the clues. If you are printing it out, consider putting all the paper in a manila envelope and writing TOP SECRET on the outside. As you are getting your lesson started and talking to the kids casually, pretend to receive communication from a secret agency. You can either have someone in the audience call your phone and pretend to answer it, or have someone deliver your Top Secret envelope to you, or pretend to receive an important transmission on your device. See the instructions packet for an actual script you can use to introduce the evil Dr. Shrubslayer and the Photosynthesis Off button.
PART 2: PHOTOSYNTHESIS – The next step is to get kids to understand a bit about the chemical reaction that IS photosynthesis. What are the inputs? What are the outputs? Try to think of this as a dialogue. See what the kids already know. Ask them to think about what plants need to grow. If they need help, you can show them the clues. Even if they don’t need help, you can still show them the clues to make more of a visual impact. Photosynthesis needs sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide (what we humans breathe out).

The outputs are oxygen (that’s an oxygen tank on the scuba diver) and glucose (a type of sugar).

If you would like to help kids remember this reaction, ask for 3 volunteers, one to be water, one to be light, and one to be carbon dioxide. One child will hold a cup of water and you can stick a leaf in it. Next have another kid shine a flashlight on the leaf, and have the third kid blow on it. Ask everyone to imagine the oxygen coming out of the plant and take deep breathes to breathe it in. Ask them to also imagine it growing very slowly as it uses up the sugar to get bigger.
PART 3: IMPACTS OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS – Now that they know what photosynthesis is, the students have to decide if they want to help capture Dr. Shrubslayer and stop him from using his Photosynthesis Off machine. (We’re busy people. We can’t stop EVERY super villain that comes to town.) In order to decide whether we want to go to the trouble of helping, we need to know why photosynthesis is important. Again, have a conversation and see what the kids already know. Ask them to think about the inputs and outputs of photosynthesis that we just discovered and what could happen if that reaction was not taking place. Show the visual clues as needed to either prompt an answer or highlight an answer given. The answer are that if there was no photosynthesis, we would all be hungry (talk about how even carnivores rely on plants), the land would be barren, and we would all struggle to breathe.
PART 4: CHLOROPHYLL – Hopefully at the end of the last section, the kids will decide YES, it’s important that we thwart the evil plan to end photosynthesis. Now introduce the next part of the role-playing game. Say that a secret code word is required to break into his facility and destroy his device. Thankfully, we have a riddle to help us figure out what the code word is. Again, refer to the Instruction Packet for a suggested script. Present this riddle:

Use the riddle as a starting point for discussion. Have the kids decipher what the riddle means, line by line. What sort of word are we looking for? Once they figure out that it is a chemical that makes plants green in summer, but goes away in fall, see if anyone knows the word. Whether they do or don’t, show them the visual clues to help them remember the word: a pool for CHLOR, a donut for O, and candy filling for FILL. Chlor-O-Fill –> Chlorophyll

Once they figure out the secret word, pretend to call it in and act like they have saved the world. They have kept the planet green and alive instead of barren and dead!
PART 5: LEAF COLLECTION (optional) – Since the group I did the lesson for was an outdoor nature group (Wild + Free), I wanted to give them something hands-on to do that involved nature. I brought little sheets of paper and crayons and challenged the kids to make leaf rubbings of as many different types of leaves as possible. The younger kids tried it, but at this point the preteens and teens mostly wandered away to socialize, which was fine too.