1. Teacher Guide
This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble.
Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on the Microsoft Educator Network.
Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location, take a Skype lesson on today’s topic, or invite a guest speaker to expand on today’s subject. And if you are using Windows 8, the panoramas in the MSN Travel App are great teaching tools. We have thousands of other education apps available on Windows here.
Nell Bang-Jensen is a teacher and theater artist living in Philadelphia, PA. Her passion for arts education has led her to a variety of roles including developing curriculum for Philadelphia Young Playwrights and teaching at numerous theaters and schools around the city. She works with playwrights from ages four to ninety on developing new work and is especially interested in alternative literacies and theater for social change. A graduate of Swarthmore College, she currently works in the Artistic Department of the Wilma Theater and, in addition to teaching, is a freelance actor and dramaturg. In 2011, Nell was named a Thomas J. Watson Fellow and spent her fellowship year traveling to seven countries studying how people get their names.
This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard: Reading—Informational Text
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.7 Explain how specific images (e.g., a diagram showing how a machine works) contribute to and clarify a text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.5 Know and use various text features (e.g., captions, bold print, subheadings, glossaries, indexes, electronic menus, icons) to locate key facts or information in a text efficiently.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.3 Describe the connection between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text.

2. If you were to plant a tulip outside your school, what would it need to grow ?
© Siebe Swart/plainpicture
Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.

3. If you were to plant a tulip outside your school, what would it need to grow ?
Given the popularity of tulips here in the Netherlands, it’s easy to assume the Dutch were the first to cultivate these flowers. But the colorful spring flowers have their roots in 10th century Persia (modern-day Iran) and were then widely cultivated during the Ottoman Empire. It’s believed the tulip was brought to the Netherlands sometime during the mid-1500s.
Fast-forward to the early 20th century, when the Dutch began draining the Zuiderzee, a shallow bay of the North Sea that once covered the region now known as Flevoland. Yes, roughly 100 years ago, the field seen here was submerged. After draining the bay to make the land habitable, the Dutch developed several settlements on the newly acquired territory. Now Noordoostpolder, a district within Flevoland, has enough tulip fields to support a festival every spring when the flowers open – soaking the landscape with bright color where once there was only saltwater.
Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.

4. If you were to plant a tulip outside your school, what would it need to grow ?1
Video Search
Find a video that explains what plants need to grow. After watching, can you explain in your own words what these things are? 2
Image Search
Find images of plants growing. What do you notice these plants have in common? Based on the images, what does it seem like plants need to grow? 3
Web Search
Plants can’t eat like people do. What do plants use for “food”? 4
Web Search/Thining
Could you put the tulip seeds right on the ground outside your school? Would they grow there? Why or why not? 5
Web Search/Thinking
Why might you want to think about what time of year you plant the tulips? Why would it grow better during some months over others?
There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)

5. If you were to plant a tulip outside your school, what would it need to grow ?5
Minutes
You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.

6. If you were to plant a tulip outside your school, what would it need to grow ?1
Video Search
Find a video that explains what plants need to grow. After watching, can you explain in your own words what these things are? 2
Image Search
Find images of plants growing. What do you notice these plants have in common? Based on the images, what does it seem like plants need to grow? 3
Web Search
Plants can’t eat like people do. What do plants use for “food”? 4
Web Search/Thining
Could you put the tulip seeds right on the ground outside your school? Would they grow there? Why or why not? 5
Web Search/Thinking
Why might you want to think about what time of year you plant the tulips? Why would it grow better during some months over others?

7. If you were to plant a tulip outside your school, what would it need to grow ?1
Video Search
Find a video that explains what plants need to grow. After watching, can you explain in your own words what these things are?
(Possible Search Queries: “Bing/Videos: for kids, what do plants need to grow?”, “Bing/Videos: for kids, how plants grow”).
Students should watch a 2-minute video such as the one found here:
After watching, students should explain what they remember from the video about how plants grow. Answers will vary. They may be able to explain that seeds need to be covered by soil in order to grow. As the plant grows, with help from the sun and water, roots emerge from the seed and develop underground. Eventually a stem grows out of the seed as well and the plant starts growing above ground. Leaves develop, then buds, and then flowers grow. These flowers may turn into fruits with seeds that then begin the process all over again.

8. If you were to plant a tulip outside your school, what would it need to grow ?2
Image Search
Find images of plants growing. What do you notice these plants have in common? Based on the images, what does it seem like plants need to grow?
(Possible Search Queries: “Bing/Images: plants growing”, “Bing/Images: flowers growing”).
Students should look at a variety of images, such as the ones found here:
They should then describe what these growing plants have in common. They might notice that they are all green, and are all growing in some kind of soil or dirt. Many of the images also show sunlight.

9. If you were to plant a tulip outside your school, what would it need to grow ?3
Web Search
Plants can’t eat like people do. What do plants use for “food”?
(Possible Search Queries: “for kids, what do plants need to grow?”, “for kids, what do plants do for food?”).
From
Just like there are certain essentials to humans’ and animals’ survival, plants have certain things they need too! – The things that plants cannot live without are water, carbon dioxide from the air, sunlight, and nutrients in the ground! Plants use these things in a special process called “photosynthesis” which allows them to make their own food, which is why they don’t need to eat! Plants contain a special helper called “chlorophyll” (which is what makes them green!) which makes photosynthesis possible. 

10. If you were to plant a tulip outside your school, what would it need to grow ?4
Web Search/Thining
Could you put the tulip seeds right on the ground outside your school? Would they grow there? Why or why not?
(Possible Search Queries: “for kids, what do plants need to grow?”, “what do seeds need?”).
Students should first think about what the ground outside their school is like. Is there dirt outside? Concrete? Pavement? They should then conduct a search to determine what kind of ground seeds need to grow in.
From
Plants need soil to put down their roots firmly and grow. But, how do they grow on rocky mountains then? Well, a few plants that do grow on the rocky mountains find soil in the cracks of the rocks – and that is where they put in the roots. If the soil is too hard it is difficult for the plants to put in their roots, so most of the places the farmers have to loosen the soil by ploughing the field.

11. If you were to plant a tulip outside your school, what would it need to grow ?5
Web Search/Thinking
Why might you want to think about what time of year you plant the tulips? Why would it grow better during some months over others?
(Possible Search Queries: “for kids, what do plants need to grow?”, “for kids, why do some plants only get planted certain times of year?”).
Students should begin thinking about weather variations and how, if they planted something in the winter months, in some places, it might freeze and not be able to grow. They can then conduct a search to figure out why this is.
From
Most plants require a certain temperature to grow. Temperature signals the plant to grow or to go dormant. Temperature needs vary among plant varieties.

12. If you were to plant a tulip outside your school, what would it need to grow ?
Students should pull together the information gathered to articulate that the tulip would probably grow best if they planted it in soil, made sure it was getting water and sunlight, and that the temperature was warm enough at the time of year they were planting it. Answers may vary. This question serves as an opportunity for young students to practice using a variety of different digital resources (images, videos, and text) in order to research a question.