Animals Lesson 5 Tab 2

Target Performances

Lesson 5 – Explaining How Animals Grow (students as explainers)

Activity 5.1: Tracing the Processes of Cows Growing: Digestion and Biosynthesis

Students “zoom in” to the structure and function of a cow’s organ systems and cells, tracing atoms and energy.

Optional Activity 5.2: Molecular Models for Cows Growing: Digestion and Biosynthesis

Students use molecular models to explain how polymers are broken into monomers during the process of digestion and monomers are linked into polymers during biosynthesis.

Activity 5.3: Explaining How Cows Grow: Digestion

Students explain how matter moves and changes and how energy changes during digestion in a cow (connecting macroscopic observations with atomic-molecular models and using the principles of conservation of matter and energy).

Activity 5.4: Explaining How Cows Grow: Biosynthesis

Students explain how matter moves and changes and how energy changes during biosynthesis in a cow’s cells (connecting macroscopic observations with atomic-molecular models and using the principles of conservation of matter and energy).

NGSS Performance Expectations

Middle school

  • MS. Matter and its Interactions. MS-PS1-1. Develop models to describe the atomic composition of simple molecules and extended structures.

High school

  • HS. From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes. HS-LS1-2. Develop and use a model to illustrate the hierarchical organization of interacting systems that provide specific functions within multicellular organisms.
  • HS. From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes. HS-LS1-6. Construct and revise an explanation based on evidence for how carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen from sugar molecules may combine with other elements to form amino acids and/or other large carbon-based molecules.