Assessment
Use the student responses to the class discussions and also their ideas on the 1.2 Expressing Ideas Tool for Animals Growing as well as the 1.2 Assessing the Expressing Ideas Tool for Animals Growing to assess their thinking at the beginning of the unit. By the end of the unit, students should be able to explain what happens when animals eat, grow, move, and breathe at macroscopic and atomic molecular scales. For now, listen to students’ ideas, with attention to how they describe matter and energy. Some students may not use principles of conservation of matter to identify food as the source of mass for animals (and instead only associate food as a source of chemical energy). Students may think that the food disappears as it is eaten, and may not recognize that atoms are transferred from the food to the organism for the purpose of growth.
Tips
If you are teaching this to multiple classes, you can save different versions of the PPT, with Slide 6 completed for each block. Alternatively, have all classes combine their answers and have students look for similarities and differences.