Plants Lesson 4 Learning Goals

Target Performances

Activity

Target Performance

Lesson 4: Explaining How Plants Make Food, Move, and Function (students as explainers)

Activity 4.1: Molecular Models for Potatoes Moving and Functioning: Cellular Respiration

Students use molecular models to explain how carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms in glucose and oxygen molecules are rearranged into carbon dioxide and water in a potato plant’s cells.

Activity 4.2: Explaining How Plants Move and Function: Cellular Respiration

Students explain how matter moves and changes and how energy changes during cellular respiration in a potato plant’s cells.

Activity 4.3: Molecular Models for Potatoes Making Food: Photosynthesis

Students use molecular models to explain how carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms in carbon dioxide and water molecules are rearranged into glucose and oxygen in a potato plant’s leaf cells.

Activity 4.4: Explaining How Plants Make Food: Photosynthesis

Students explain how matter moves and changes and how energy changes during photosynthesis in a potato plant’s leaf cells.

NGSS Performance Expectations

Middle School

  • MS. Structure and Properties of Matter. MS-PS1-1. Develop models to describe the atomic composition of simple molecules and extended structures.
  • MS. Chemical Reactions. MS-PS1-2. Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred.
  • MS. Chemical Reactions. MS-PS1-5. Develop and use a model to describe how the total number of atoms does not change in a chemical reaction and thus mass is conserved.
  • MS. Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems. MS-LS1-6. Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and non-living parts of an ecosystem.
  • MS. Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems. MS-LS1-7. Develop a model to describe how food is rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support growth and/or release energy as this matter moves through an organism.
  • MS. Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems. MS-LS2-3. Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and non-living parts of an ecosystem.

High School

  • HS. Chemical Reactions. HS-PS1-4. Develop a model to illustrate that the release or absorption of energy from a chemical reaction system depends upon the changes in the total bond energy.
  • HS. Chemical Reactions. HS-PS1-7. Use mathematical representations to support the claim that atoms, and therefore mass, are conserved during a chemical reaction.
  • HS. Structure and Function. HS-LS1-2. Develop and use a model to illustrate the hierarchical organization of interacting systems that provide specific functions within multicellular organisms.
  • HS. Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems. HS-LS1-5. Use a model to illustrate how photosynthesis transforms light energy into stored chemical energy.
  • HS. Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems. HS-LS1-7. Use a model to illustrate that cellular respiration is a chemical process whereby the bonds of food molecules and oxygen molecules are broken and the bonds in new compounds are formed resulting in a net transfer of energy.
  • HS. Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems. HS-LS2-5. Develop a model to illustrate the role of photosynthesis and cellular respiration in the cycling of carbon among the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere.