Celery has strings?!

This week my students did not eat a piece of celery, but dissected it!!  They were learning about vascular tissue and what job it has in a plant.   Before the students "learned" anything from me, I had them explore a piece of celery with a guided inquiry activity.  They seemed to pick up on the idea that the strings they saw inside of the celery contained water, because everytime they went to open more of the celery, water came from inside and ended up on the paper towel.  By going around and asking them different questions, they figured out that if water was being moved through the tubes, then food or sugar must also be doing the same thing!  When we started to explain what they were seeing, finding out that those strings were called vascular tubes and they had names was a cinch for them to understand!  They had already seen them and had held them in their hands.  It made their learning a million times easier!!