Chapter 1 Introduction

Materials:

• Scientific Method Worksheet
• Independent Practice Worksheet
• The six pictures below.
• Living organisms for students to use for the Independent Practice:
  • Excellent teachers will use things like microscopes with a variety of slides, pod warter, onion cells, slides of tissues, demonstrate how to use a microscope, living plants, and take a walk around the school, etc.
  • Average teachers will take a walk outside while students try to complete the sheet using organisms found around the school grounds but will not take 10 minutes to dig out the microscopes.
  • Poor teachers will sit at their desk and tell students to look out the window.

Objective:

• Students will develop goals about what they want to learn and organize their thoughts about the basic unit of life.
• Students will identify the steps to the scientific method.

Alaska Standards:

• SCI A12, Students will distinguish the patterns of similarity and differences in the living world in order to understand the diversity of life an understand the theories that describe the importance of diversity for species and ecosystems.
• SCI B1, Students will use the processes of science; these processes include observing, classifying, measuring, interpreting data, inferring, communicating, controlling variables, developing models and theories, hypothesizing, predicting, and experimenting.

Anticipatory Set: Ask students to think of some animals and plants (see pictures below). Discuss these organisms through a series of questions. What do students know about the animals or plants? Are these organisms made of any parts? What is the smallest part students know? Why do living things drink water? What do plants and animals have to do to stay alive? How do plants get their food?

Have the students make lists of some of the things they know and some further questions they have. Then discuss what they have written. Students will reveiw this at the end of the chapter.

Teacher Input: The teacher will introduce the steps to the scientific method. (Use the worksheet)

Teacher Modeling: The teacher will lead a discussion of a scientific solution to a problem. Leading questions: Give me an observation of some natural event that you witnessed today that is hard to explain. Use the scientific method to try to explain it. Relate the discussion to how we will approach learning about the basic unit of life.

Check for Understanding: Students will think about what they could learn about the cell using the scientific method or other means and develop a list of goals for learning (questions they want the answers to). Sample list: What is a cell? How are cells organized in living things? How are animal and plant cells similar and different? What chemicals are important to life and how are they used? What are basic life activities that all animals share?

Guided Practice: Students will be shown the six pictures below. Ask them the following questions:

• These organisms all look very different from one another but what characteristicts do all these living things share?
• This chapter is mainly about identifying what living things share, what makes these living things different from nonliving things?

Closure: Students will make a list of 10 other living things they have encountered this past week. Do they share the same similarities as those living things in the picture?

(15 minutes before or after the lesson)

Independent Practice: Students will use items set up by the classroom teacher or take a short walk around the school to identify five organisms and then list three things that they beleive makes them alive. Use this worksheet.

Duration:

30 minutes + 10-15 for Independent Practice (Could be longer if taken for homework).