Are you looking to up your game when working on your plant defenses lesson plan? I got you! Why not bring the WOW Factor to your science classroom?
Plants are constantly under attack. How do plants protect themselves? They defend themselves against pathogens and herbivores (animals that eat plants). Plants have physical defenses, chemical defenses, indirect defenses, and unique defenses.
In this post, I share ways to engage your students in this lesson about plant defenses by using WONDER activities. Second, I share an interactive lesson that will guide your students through all of the ways that plants are able to defend themselves. Finally, I share some WIDEN (extension) activities to help your students apply their knowledge and learn even more!

Plant Defense Mechanism Intro Activities – WONDER
It’s important to get your students hooked into a lesson to learn more about plant defense systems. Let me tell you, if your middle school students aren’t into the lesson…trust me…they’ll find something else to do. Can I get an AMEN! Science is awesome, you just have to help your students realize that. I like to use WONDER strategies and activities. Here are two that you can use to engage your students in your plant defenses lesson plan.
That Tricky Plant
This video shows how a wild tobacco plant tricks caterpillars as a self defense mechanism. The plant deposits a “sweet treat” for these caterpillars to eat. However…there is a catch! Once the caterpillars eat this, they start to smell bad, and that smell can be tracked by predators. Oh, poor caterpillars!
This kind of thing will interest the students! Who knew that plants were so sneaky, right?
There are SO many more examples of defense mechanisms like this. This is a great discussion starter. Do your students know any more examples of plant defenses before you dive into the lesson?

Field Trip Outside
Why not go outside and look at some real plants?
Before you go outside, tell your students that plants have defense mechanisms that help protect themselves against being eaten or getting a disease. Tell them that their job is to go on a scavenger hunt, thoroughly observe plants, and see what list they can come up with to show these defenses.
Depending on what kind of plants you have outside of your school (or home), they may see thorns, prickles, or spines. They may also see waxy leaves. They could even smell some plant defenses!
Just see what your students come up with! Students are so smart!
Plant Defense Mechanisms Interactive Lesson
Now, your students should be quite a bit curious to learn more about what wild things that a plant can do to defend themselves. It’s time to dive deeper into the content!
Interactive lessons are great to teach content (as well as review) because they guide students through the content, and segment information, making it easier to process. There are also embedded activities to help students process information. The lessons also incorporate more of the 7 steps to help students retain information.

In this plant defense mechanisms interactive lesson, students learn about flowering plants, plant physical defenses, chemical defenses, indirect defenses, and unique defenses. They will also learn of some plant defense mechanisms examples for each of these.
Inside, the embedded activities include a KWL, drag-and-drop activities, answering questions in the text box, exploring outside resources, and more! This is not your average plant defense mechanisms PPT.
You can find this in the Bright in the Middle Shop.
You can also find this on TPT.
Plant Defenses WIDEN Activities
Now that your students have learned SO much about how plants defend themselves, it’s now time for your students to apply their knowledge and learn a bit more! Here are some WIDEN activities to try out!
STEM – Create a Plant
Who doesn’t love a good STEM activity?
This is your students’ chance to shine!
- Gather some materials such as construction paper, paper clips, toilet paper rolls, cardboard, glue, rubber bands, crayons, scissors, and more STEM materials.
- Tell students that they are going to create their own plant, but it must have some defense mechanisms to keep it safe. It can be any of the ones they learned in the lesson, or multiple ones.
- Give them a STEM blueprint and have them plan out their plant creation. Bonus points if it includes structures for survival and reproduction in addition to defense!
- Once their blueprint is approved, students can be using the STEM materials to share their creation!
- They must be able to explain. A class presentation is a great idea!
Instagram Profile Template – Plant Defenses Style
This could be an extension off of the STEM activity or you can keep this as a separate WIDEN activity!
So, there are many Instagram profile templates that you can find online.
- Students will be tasked to create an Instagram profile template for a particular plant. It could be one they created in the STEM project above, or it can be one in real life.
- In this profile template, they must come up with things about their plant like the username, # of posts, # of followers and following, the profile picture, bio, and story highlights. That’s not all, they must also put pictures in the 9-grid.
- Make sure students know that this profile must display how this plant defends themselves.
Is the plant defense mechanism against herbivores, pathogens, something else? This is a fun a creative way to extend students’ knowledge on this topic!
Help your students master science content!

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