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)