Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Writing Roadblocks

I will make a suggestion. In this situation, I'd have asked him to pick some assumptions about one or more places on the imaginary planet and then take plants that would grow in the environment(s) he imagined. This process can bring some imagination into the assignment. The basic idea about making assumptions and testing them is used in the sciences and in engineering, and it's a good skill to develop.

Emm.

Also, not all plants have to be pollinated (it's a flowering plant thing). Land plants appear to have evolved on earth* well before land animals. As far as the exercise goes, this fact could create an opportunity to look up the kinds of plants that existed hundreds of millions of years ago, and the kinds of creatures who crawled out of the sea to eat them.

I would use this little mistake as an example of checking your facts before writing them down.

*It's complicated; amphibious plants and such; maybe there were worms --- but you get the basic idea. At some point, there were plants on the land, and sea creatures that managed to climb out of the water started to eat them.