Students complete a probe identifying items as living or nonliving.
Teacher does a “Capsicum Neom” demonstration to have students hypothesize if a moving object that appears to eat is living or nonliving.
Students examine pictures and develop criteria to classify things in a natural environment as living or nonliving.
Students watch video clips and read informative text to complete Frayer models on the six life processes.
Students perform an investigative lab to decide whether similar looking things are alive.
Students complete a Claim-Evidence-Reasoning evaluation based on the previous session's investigation (Life Detectives Lab).
Students complete a formative assessment.
Students read an article about viruses and debate if a virus is living or nonliving.
Previously in grades K-5, students have explored macroscopic structure and function. They have explained how organism parts work together to help the organism grow and behave. They may come with a basic understanding of what it means to be alive, such as movement, growth, and reproduction.
In this cycle, students will construct an explanation that answers the guiding question, “What defines life, and what are common life processes among living things?” They explore a phenomenon of a squiggly object, wondering if it is living or not, and how we could tell. They develop a criteria for deciding if something is alive, read about characteristics of life, and perform an investigative lab to determine if a sample contains life.
Once students have an understanding of the characteristics of life, they will dive deeper in Cycle 2 by specifically exploring cellularity as a defining characteristic of life.