R. Anita, a Trained Graduate Teacher and Project Coordinator at the Government High Schools in Mettupalayam has been named for NCERT’s National Awards for Innovative Practices and Experiments in Education for Schools and Teachers Education Institutions for her project on plant study. Her project on ‘A study of the habitat of the plants through morphological analysis carries a cash award of Rs 10000. Based on her observations with students of class VI and VII, her finding is that explaining the structure of plants living in different habitats through the textbooks drawing their diagrams on the board does give good results. Collecting plants from different habitats, observing them and discussion will have better results with the students and shall also create interest in them.
35 students were a part of her this 40 day experiment. Children were divided in groups. They were made to collect two plants of the same kind from their locality. One plant was planted in the school campus and the other was dissected and view recorded in the observation notebook. Whenever a plant dried up, its stem, root and leaves were noted and discussed along with the reason for their not surviving in the school habitat. This way the student acquired a comprehensive knowledge in habitats of plants through morphological analysis. They were also able to differentiate between the stem, leaf and roots of terrestrial plants from aquatic plants, freshwater plants and marine water plants.
Source: The Hindu
