Animals Unit

As students learn to answer the driving question by explaining how animal systems transform matter and energy, they play three different roles that encompass all of the Next Generation Science Standards science and engineering practices.

• Questioners: Students explore the driving question, clarify, and generate more detailed questions
• Investigators: Students conduct matter-tracing investigations of mealworms eating and develop evidence-based arguments about key observations and patterns
• Explainers: Students construct model-based explanations of how animals grow.

The roles that students play are also embedded in the instructional model and Discourse Routine. The Discourse Routine guides how classroom discourse aimed first at divergent thinking and then at convergent thinking should be sequenced through the unit.

Students figure out how to answer the driving question by tracing carbon-containing molecules through a series of movements and chemical changes inside animals. At each stage in these processes they answer Three Questions about what is happening: The Matter Movement Question, the Matter Change Question, and the Energy Change Question.

Below, we use the anchoring phenomenon of child growth as an example of how students learn to answer the Three Questions for different animals.

Note that, in Carbon TIME, crosscutting concepts serve as the “rules of grammar” for producing a scientific performance. With respect to animals growing, high quality explanations should attend to the following rules that are implied by crosscutting concepts. Explanations should attend to:

• Scale by explaining events and phenomena at the appropriate scale (see more in the structure and function bullets below).
• Systems and system models and energy and matter by following rules for tracing matter and energy through systems and system models. For example, neither energy nor matter should be created or destroyed as it moves into, through, or out of a system.
• Structure and function by linking structures and functions in explanations at each scale.
  • Macroscopic scale (tracing matter and energy through processes occurring in organs and organ systems)
  • Cellular scale (tracing matter and energy into and out of cells as cellular functions are carried out)
  • Atomic-molecular scale (tracing matter and energy through chemical processes—digestion, cellular respiration, and biosynthesis—involving molecules with different structures and properties)

Students learn to tell the following story of how carbon-containing molecules move through body systems and cells.

• Carbon atoms enter animals’ bodies as part of large organic molecules—carbohydrates, fats, and proteins—in food.
• Some large organic molecules that animals eat are never digested and leave animals’ bodies as feces, but they are not the ones that help animals to grow, move, and function.
• Digested small organic molecules (monomers) containing carbon atoms move out of animals’ digestive systems and into all the cells of their bodies. Cells use these molecules to do the work that enables animals to grow, move, and function.
• All cells produce carbon dioxide that ultimately leaves animals through their respiratory systems.

Matter movement is an essential part of the story, but not the whole story. To answer the driving question, students learn to explain chemical changes that occur inside animals:

• Large organic molecules (polymers) are broken down into small organic molecules (monomers) in animals’ digestive systems. Both large and small organic molecules have chemical energy stored in their C-C and C-H bonds.
• Biosynthesis and growth. Animals grow when their cells grow and divide through the process of biosynthesis—combining small organic molecules from food to make the large organic molecules needed for cells’ structure and function.
• Cellular respiration—energy to move and function. Animal cells get the energy they need to move and function by combining sugars and other small organic molecules with oxygen, releasing energy when high-energy C-C and C-H bonds are replaced by lower-energy bonds in carbon dioxide and water.

Biology textbooks go into lots of details not included in the brief account above—about animals’ body systems, about cellular structure and function, and about macromolecules and metabolic processes. But our learning progression research has shown that there is an important tradeoff here—many students get lost in the details and never learn a basic coherent story that answers the driving question. The Next Generation Science Standards take a clear position on this tradeoff; a coherent story based on principles such as matter and energy conservation is more important than the details. Consult the Unit Sequence tab to decide how much detail is appropriate for your students.

Another way to familiarize yourself with the sequence of lessons in the Animals Unit is with the Unit Storyline Chart depicted below. The Unit Storyline Chart summarizes a unit phenomenon-based driving question associated with each lesson, what classes will do in each lesson to address the question, what conclusions they will come to, and how they will transition to a subsequent lesson.

Download Unit IM and Storyline Chart

All Carbon TIME units are organized around a common purpose: assessing and scaffolding students’ three-dimensional engagement with phenomena. Every Carbon TIME activity has its specific expectation for students’ three-dimensional engagement with phenomena, what we call its target performance. Each activity also includes tools and strategies that teachers can use to asses and scaffold the target performance in rigorous and responsive ways.

The target performances for each activity in the Animals unit are listed in the table below.

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