About this worksheet
Jan Baptist van Helmont's willow tree experiment from the 1600s drives this 5-page 5th grade reading and argument worksheet. The passage gives the real numbers: 200 pounds of dried soil, a 5-pound sapling, and five years of rainwater. The tree ends at 169 pounds while the soil loses barely two ounces. Questions in three parts move from retrieval to a claim-and-evidence argument that plants grow mostly from air and water, the idea at the center of NGSS 5-LS1-1. A final task has students correct a friend with a giant bag of dirt.
