Biology Form 3 First lesson: “Characteristics of Living

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Primas 1 Biology Form 3 First lesson: “Characteristics of Living Things”. Time: 90 minutes Aim: The students should be able to give reasons why things are classified as living and non-living. 2. The students should be able to mention the 7 vital functions. 3. They should be able to give the definition of them. 4. They should be able to give examples. Plan how you will arrange the room and the resources needed

Plan how you will introduce the questioning session

Plan how you will establish the ground rules:

Plan the fist question that you

1. I start explaining the aims of this lesson in the lab. Students sit where they want – preferably on the first bench to be closer to me. 2. Then we walk out to the garden where they can sit on the benches there. (change the environment of the lab helps them to think better as we are no longer in the same environment where most of the lessons occur) 3. Then we enter in the lab and students sit in groups at 4 ends of 2 benches. 4. At the end of the lesson they will come back on the front bench for the conclusion. Resources: power point presentation; classwork handouts; note handout; homework handout; envelops with problems; pictures of life cycle of frog; kangaroo with joey in pouch; butterfly complete metamorphosis and grasshopper incomplete metamorphosis. 1. I will be using the 5E model: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate. So I will introduce the questioning session when we arrive on the benches in the garden. Here the benches take 3 students each. So the students will deceide where they want to sit (most probable near their friends). Q1: (Engage) In groups of 3 look around you and on the paper write down a list of 6 living things that you see around us and 6 non-living things. I want to hear you discuss together and describe the criteria you use to deceide if the thing is living or non-living. 1. Students sit where they want. The reason is that they will automatically chose to sit near the students with whom they have good relationships and with whom they can talk and discuss without reservations or shyness. No one puts up her hand to answer as I will be asking everyone what they discussed in their reflection time. In groups of 3 look around you and on the paper write down a list of 6 living things that you see around us and 6 non-living

Josephine Ebejer Grech B.Ed. (Hons.) Biology

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Plan how you will give thinking time

Plan how and when you will intervene

things. I want to hear you discuss together and describe the criteria you use to deceide if the thing is living or non-living. All of you will speak. Every student in each group will give me 2 items you write and explain to us the criteria that you decided on. So your answers need to be not short ones – a few sentences long. (5 minutes for writing down the list and 15 minutes for the answers). 5 minutes to discuss in groups; 15 minutes – approximately 1 minute for each student to tell us her answer. I am keeping in mind that there will be repeated answers that would take less time. When a student replies, I will bounce answers to other students in the same group to elaborate on the criteria they choose. I will intervene with alternative questions when I hear a misconception but I will not say wrong or right until they themselves say the right answer by reasoning aloud together and arriving at the right criteria. I must be careful as to see that while one group is replying, the other groups are paying attention.

Plan what questions you could use for the plenary at the end of the lesson

Planning: 1. After that the students arrive in class, I give them 1 minute to talk freely about anything they want. Then I will ask them to focus only on the lesson. After a short explanation – (describing the aims of this lesson – as shown above), I ask them to take a paper and pen and walk outside. (1 minute) After an activity outside, we will walk back into the lab. Procedure: Introduce the problem and give time for individuals to think. State clearly at the beginning of the lesson that I will encourage them to reflect, think and reason. They are encouraged to provide extended thoughtful answers without being afraid of making mistakes. Reasoning means “Thinking Aloud”. 1. Take the students in the garden and sit down on the benches. Ask them to look around them and list 6 living things and 6 non-living things. I am going to make sure you have plenty of time to think. After 5 minutes ask them to read out their lists. 2. Ask them to describe their criteria for deceiding why they are living or nonliving. (15 minutes for their answers and reasoning) 3. Back in class: Collect initial ideas on the board – write down the list of vital functions that they had mentioned outside. (3 minutes)


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4. Ask them to stay in 4 groups at 4 ends of 2 front benches, and draw a concept map of their knowledge of the vital functions. During this step the students need to think and brainstorm their previous knowledge of vital functions. 5. After 5 minutes discuss. Make sure to listen to everyone (not one after the other but at random as not to make it obvious whose turn it is). Don’t make judgements or say right or wrong. Bounce answers to other students to elaborate more on each point and bring out more and more ideas. Construct a concept map together. Ask the students to write down their ideas on the board. 10 minutes. Allow students time to engage with the problem. When they ask questions, ask them a question that offers strategic guidance rather than technical help. Ask: How are we going to review progress so far? 6. Write down the definitions of the vital functions as on notes. This step of writing is aimed at changing the format of the lesson i.e. not only listening and discussing but writing too. 5 minutes 7. Explore. Distribute 4 envelops, one for each group, and ask to think for 5 more minutes. In the envelops there are the questions on page 3 of this document. 8. A representative of each group comes out and describes to the others what animal her group discussed and add to the concept map any points that were previously left out. 10 minutes (2 minutes each group) 9. Elaborate: See the power point about vital functions (5 minutes) and work out the problems on the last slide. 10. Evaluate: Classwork as to check if the aims of this lesson were achieved: Classwork: Handout. To be worked in groups but every student fills in the answers. (15 minutes) Class correction of classwork: 10 minutes) 11. Handout of page 8 for homework. Reflection abou this lesson: 1. It took me a long time to paln this lesson. I realised that I went into more depth than I usually go and it is not possible to dedicate all this time to each and every lesson that I do as I don’t have the time (20 lessons + 2 Primas + 2 Prize Day + volontary 2 eTwinning projects + Connecting Classrooms project + singing club during breaks). I end up doing much of the work and corrections at home after the housework, errands, taking care of my 3 years old son, and when my son and my husband sleep at night I go on my PC to start working on school things”). 2. Another reflection is that after 12 years teaching most of the reasoning and decisions I put down on paper, I usually do them mentally without writing them down. This project is making me aware of some points that I usually take for granted and I am making more effort to be aware to use the 5E model during my lessons and use more critical thinking questions that require open ended answers that need reflection. Many answers can lead to more quetions that sometimes not even I as a teacher know the answer to them and I need to do further research about them.


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Examples of questions: For example when we were outside in the garden students asked amongst themselves: Is the bench living? It is made up of wood. Wood comes from trees. But the fact that the tree was cut to take its wood, and we don’t know for how many years it has been here, does it make it a living or a non-living? Then when they asked me, I replied: Think of what you as a living thing do to make you classified as living and then think of the bench. Then they asked: But I eat and drink and move and breathe and the plant is living but it doesn’t feed, drink, moven and breathe. And I replied: Doesn’t it? Perhaps you need to think deeper. And they kept talking amongst themselves: If the plant doesn’t feed it dies. Yes, my mum says if she doesn’t water the plants they die, so they do drink, and then someone else said: perhaps the plants eat from the soil. But they don’t move. Another one said that the plant that her mother has in the kitchen always grows towards the window and when her mother makes it look towards the table, the day after she finds it looking again at the window, so the plants do move in a way. Etc etc etc. . . . I think that not saying right or wrong, and bouncing back their answers to themselves, helped them out to reflect deeper and think more. Usually we tend to cut a long story short because we are pressed by time and we give the answers to the students. But this extra reflection time can be saved form repeating the lesson and revising before exams as when students come up with their own conclusions after their own reflection, makes them remember more the concepts you are trying to teach them. The idea of constructing a concept map starting with the 7 words that they discovered during the garden exercise and building it up as they think deeper was a very good exercise as many more good ideas were coming out than I thought they could. I noticed more attention and more alertness when I was asking everyone (not by turn). Students showed interest and developed their reasoning skills. The exercise of the envelops made them think further about the vital functions e.g. Movement: fish swims; bird flies; plant moves its flowers towards the sun; peron runs or walks or dances; movement of food inside our gut; movement of our eyes blinking; our heart pumping blood, our lungs inflating and deflating etc. . . It was also a good exercise to understand that not all living things grow in the same way e.g. complete metamorphosis of butterfly and incomplete metamorphosis of grasshopper; life cycle of a frog as compared to the life cycle of a human or kangarro. Students kept asking: So, miss, the caterpillar, and the pupa and the butterfly are the same organism? And I answered: What do you think? And they kept reasoning aloud until they concluded that they were the same organism growing in a different way.


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Primas 1 Note:

Characteristics of Living Things are those things that distinguish between a living and a non living thing. They are also referred to as the vital functions. 1.

Feeding (nutrition) – the process of taking in / synthesising food in an organism.

2.

Respiration – is the process by which energy is produced from the breakdown of food.

3.

_______________ – the process by which living organisms get rid of waste products of metabolism and any excess water and salts taken in with the diet.

4.

Reproduction – the way in which a species is perpetuated.

5.

________________ – an increase in size or mass or both in an organism.

6.

Movement (locomotion) – when organisms move about or move part of their body.

7.

_________________ – (sometimes called irritability) is the ability of living organisms to respond to stimuli.

_______________– to take in good air and remove unwanted air from an organism to the environment. This used to be considered as a vital function, but not anymore since even non-living things exchange air. References: Please Read the following pages from the following books: Biology for Life – Roberts pg. 6-8 GCSE Biology – Mackean pg.292 summary Pg 293 – 323 further notes.


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Primas 1 Classwork:

1. How do plants feed? __________________________________ 2. How do animals feed? _________________________________ 3. What are carnivores? _________________________________ 4. What are herbivores? _________________________________ 5. What are omnivores? __________________________________ 6. What are parasites? ___________________________________ 7. What are saprotrophs? __________________________________ 8. What are scavengers? ___________________________________

1. Aerobic respiration is the release of energy from breaking down food using ____________. 2. Anaerobic respiration is the release of energy from breaking down food without using ________________.

1. What do plants excrete? _______________________________ 2. What do animals excrete? ______________________________

1. Asexual reproduction means _______________________________ 2. Sexual reproduction means ________________________________ 3. Internal fertilization means _______________________________ 4. External fertilization means _______________________________


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1. Cell division means when cells multiply and the organism grows. 2. Cell specialization means when the cells are given a particular job to do and therefore there is growth. 3. Metamorphosis means change in the body of the organism when it is growing. 4. Incomplete metamorphosis is when there is not a complete change in the body of the insect while it is growing e.g. ____________. 5. Complete metamorphosis means when there is a complete change in the body of the insect e.g. ______________.

1.

Some microscopic organisms move by means of __________ and ___________.

2.

Plants move when they change their direction of growth towards the _________.

3.

Some organisms move by propelling their __________.

4.

Fish move by __________.

5.

Birds move by _____________.

6.

Humans move by _____________________________________ _________________________________________________

1. Plants sensitivity is shown by ___________. 2. A person can be sensitive to _________, __________, _______ 3. When a person responds to a stimulus s/he _________________ __________________________________________________


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Homework: Match a number in Column A with a letter in Column B. The first one is done for you. A Feeding Movement Respiration Reproduction Excretion Growth Sensitivity

Answers: 1.d 2.

2. a. b. c. d. e. f.

B a. production of energy b. increase in size or becoming more complex c. respond to a stimulus d. food is needed to obtain energy and growth e. change place or direction to grow and/or search for food f. elimination of waste products produced by metabolism g. production of new individuals (offsprings) like the parent or parents

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Which vital function is involved in each of these actions? having breakfast _________________________ watching the news _________________________ a frog laying eggs _________________________ a sparrow flying up into its nest_________________________ the production of carbon dioxide, alcohol,and energy by yeast________________________ when a seedling shoots out from the seed. _____________________ <<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

3. This question is about the vital functions. Explain the meaning of the following words. i. respiration _____________________________________________ ii.

nutrition _______________________________________________

iii.

excretion _______________________________________________

iv.

reproduction ___________________________________________

v.

sensitivity ______________________________________________

vi.

locomotion _____________________________________________

b. Which vital function is missing from the above list? _______________________________________________________________


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3. Which questions didn’t work so well? Why was this? I don’t know. 4. Which of the following 4 pricinples did you use? Give examples: Planned questions that encourge thinking and reasoning – I did so especially in the classwork handouts pg 6+7. Ask questions in ways that include everyone – was trying to ask everyone and not leave anyone out. Give students time to think – every time I was allowing a few minutes to discuss in groups – to help each other other. The aim was thinking aloud and expressing to each other what they are reasoning in their minds. Avoid judging students’ responses – sometimes I didn’t manage to do this, but on the whole I succeeded well throughout the lesson. Follow up students’ responses in ways that encourage deeper thinking – done. What will you do different next time? Allow more time for thinking and reasoning. Be careful as not to be judgemental. Ask more intelligent higher order questions. Prepare more – I think that there is no limit of preperations for an excellent lesson, but as I wrote at the beginning – even for us teachers time is limited for preperations.


Biology Form 3 First lesson: “Characteristics of Living

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