Classroom Activities
Photon Journey and Photosynthesis
In the beginning of this part of the unit direct lecture and notes will be given. These will be provided with Power Point or Google Slides. Students will take notes in written and sketch form about photon creation, movement within the Sun, movement from the Sun to Earth and movement within the chloroplast for photosynthesis. In order for students to best understand the timing of photon development as well as distances travelled, students will use the classroom or the hallway to visualize time elapsed and distance traveled. They can visualize the time elapsed of a photon escaping the Sun, scaling it onto an image of a clock representing 24 hours. And they will take the actual distance traversed and do a scaled down representation.
A third strategy used in this part of the unit will be an inquiry-based lab. Students will be given many options to explore: acquisition of CO2 through stomata of different plants or the same plant with changes to the stomata, growing plants with and without photon exposure, and seeing how different plants respond to the same environmental light exposure. Students can own their learning here, choosing a lab they are most interested in and making a lab report based on the results to be shared in a poster session with everyone in the class.
Photosynthesis Interference
The student-led classroom experiences for this part of the unit will engage students with independent research and presentation skills. Students will choose a disaster of their choice of to study: dinosaur-killing asteroid, volcano that caused a year without a summer, a nuclear blast or forest fires. Students will use information collected through independent research to determine how these disasters can impact photon diffusion to plants for photosynthetic processing. Based on their findings, they will present to the class how these events have classically worked based on the data, whether or not the event hurts the rest of life on the planet in the same way as it hurts plants and how we can better prepare for and prevent or cause (depending on whether or not the event helps or hurts photosynthesis) this to occur in the future.
Astrobiology and Photosynthesis
For the jigsaw that starts this final part of the curriculum, students will be in home groups of 3-6 and divide up to read about specific aspects of astrobiology that will then share with each other. This will be the background information for the inquiry-based research. Students will then choose one exoplanet to study from a vast list. They will investigate all known data about it, which can include some or all of the following: parent star(s), mass, diameter, biosignatures, rocky or not, and water-bearing or not. Students will then do a Claim Evidence Reasoning paper where they will make a claim about whether or not the planet can be habitable based on evidence that exists and reasoning about what is needed for life. Students will put this information on poster paper so students can do a gallery walk of each other’s claims and write on Post-It Notes put on the posters whether or not they agree with the claims and why.
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1 Found in "Mysteries of the Sun," NASA.
2 Found in "Tour of the Electromagnetic Spectrum," NASA.
3 Found in "The Search for Life," NASA.
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