The River Watch Activity Pack

Identifying the plants

Key objective:

To identify the trees found around the river.

Equipment needed

• Tree name trail key
• Camera

Alongside the river there will be a number of trees for the children to identify.

There is a Tree Name Trail Key to help the children identify the trees and they will need to go through the key systematically answers questions such as “Are the leaves like small pointed scales, completely covering the stem?” these questions will enable the children to identify the tree. They can record the trees on a tally chart. Trees that they cannot identify can be photographed and possibly identified later by the expert.

You may wish to extend this by identifying plants as well.

Problems

It will take a while for the children to start to identify the trees, however using a Key like this really encourages the children to look in detail and specific features on the trees.

Why are we doing this?

The type of tree found near the river is influenced by the height of the water table (is the soil saturated), the time the tree has had to grow and the soil and rock type of the river bank. These results can be shared with other schools to identify differences in the tree types along the river transect.

Resources

Identifying trees
www.naturegrid.org.uk