Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Fast Plants”
Teaching and Learning with Fast Plants Investigations We know it is important to “help students make sense of the natural world by designing and carrying out authentic, student driven investigations (Wingert & Bell, 2015).” Compared to other living organisms, Wisconsin Fast Plants are easy to manage and very responsive to factors in their environment. In addition, many easy-to-observe Fast Plant phenotypes …
Maybe you’ve grown Wisconsin Fast Plants before, or perhaps you’re just getting started–either way, we all want to grow strong, healthy Fast Plants. Nobody wants tall, spindly plants that need support or sickly plants that barely flower. No problem! Read on, and we’ll explain three common pitfalls to avoid when setting up growing conditions that support healthy Fast Plant growth. 1. Not …
Variation is a fundamental attribute of life; understanding its nature is important to all. Wisconsin Fast Plants are an ideal model for teaching this concept, with easily observable variation in many plant traits. This variation can be observed, described, and measured or quantified to gain greater understanding of plant traits. Development of selection experiments allows analysis of recorded data and measuring …
Wisconsin Fast Plants are an ideal model organism for observing and learning about inheritance patterns! Monohybrid and Dihybrid crosses demonstrate Mendelian patterns while other genetic stocks provide opportunity for observing cytoplasmic traits and developing of selection experiments. What inheritance patterns are observable in Fast Plants? Mendelian traits: monohybrid cross this investigation focuses on the genetics of the plant stem color trait Mendelian …
Wisconsin Fast Plants are perfect for teaching life science in the classroom! Initially developed as a research tool at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Fast Plants have 30+ years of use as a model organism in K-12 education. This post is an introduction to teaching with Fast Plants, with links for easy access to materials that support developing and implementing hands-on life science …
Simply stated, Wisconsin Fast Plants are not genetically engineered plants. Rather, Fast Plants are the result of over 30 years of ordinary plant breeding that continues, today. This plant breeding began in about 1974, using the same ways of doing things that people have used for at least 10,000 years to tame/control and improve crops for human use (p. 65). In other words, …
Growing healthy Fast Plants is easy if you understand how the environment can affect growth and development. Three broad categories of environmental factors influence how an individual plant matures through its life cycle: 1) the physical environment, 2) the chemical environment, 3) the biological environment. This post is part of a series explaining how key chemical environmental factors can impact plants, Wisconsin Fast Plants in particular. Our website describes …
Environment plays a key role in how your Fast Plants grow and develop through their life cycle. Classifying environmental factors into three broad groups can be useful for studying their effects: 1) the physical environment, 2) the chemical environment, 3) the biological environment. This post is part of a series that explains how key environmental factors can impact plants. We focus here on biological factors and Wisconsin Fast Plants. Our website …
Growing healthy Fast Plants is easy if you understand how the environment can affect growth and development. Three broad categories of environmental factors influence how an individual plant matures through its life cycle: 1) the physical environment, 2) the chemical environment, 3) the biological environment. This post is part of a series explaining how key environmental factors–physical, chemical, and biological–can impact plants, Wisconsin Fast Plants in particular. Our …
Hairs are not often a trait that we associate with plants. However, of all the traits that students might observe in a population of Fast Plants, we can learn a lot about variation and natural selection by counting and selecting for the number of hairs on a leaf margin. Selective breeding to increase (or decrease) hairiness can provide an excellent opportunity …
Wisconsin Fast Plants were developed as research tool at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and have been used by K-16 teachers around the world for nearly 30 years as an educational model-organism.
