Wiki Page, Biology A with Mrs. Mason - Trimester 1: Course Description

Wiki Page
2021-08-26T13:11:53-07:00

“Captain, this appears to be a carbon-based life-form.”

This is a line from just about any Star Trek episode. You and me, your dog, and the gasoline in the tank of any car – we are all carbon-based.

CARBON is the present in every form of life that we have discovered on Earth; carbon is everywhere: in the air, rocks, oceans, mud, you look for it and you are likely to find it.

Biology A is on the track of carbon—the atom, the molecules that make up life, the way it can store energy, and what happens when that energy is released.

Unit 1 How we are going to study carbon and what scales we are going to look through.

Unit 2 How carbon gets into a salad and what's done with it.

Unit 3 How carbon gets into a hamburger and what's done with it.

Unit 4 How all of these things work with the environment where things live.

Unit 1: Systems and Scale

The goal of the Systems and Scale unit is to introduce students to organic matter and chemical energy (in the context of combustion) using the tools for reasoning and environmental literacy practices that students will engage with in other units. Students develop required capacity to distinguish organic matter from inorganic matter, and to understand how differences in the chemical make-up of materials influences how materials and energy are transformed and moved between systems.

The Systems and Scale Unit supports students in using core disciplinary ideas, science practices, and cross-cutting concepts to develop scientific explanations of how matter and energy are transformed during combustion of different organic materials.

Unit 2: Animals

The goal of the Animals unit is to introduce students to organic matter and chemical energy (in the context of digestion and biosynthesis) using the tools for reasoning and environmental literacy practices that students will engage with in other units. Students develop required capacity to distinguish organic matter from inorganic matter, and to understand how differences in the chemical make-up of materials influences how materials and energy are transformed and moved between systems.

The Animals Unit supports students in using core disciplinary ideas, science practices, and cross-cutting concepts to develop scientific explanations of how different animals transform matter and energy as they grow, move, and function.

Unit 3: Plants

The Plants Unit starts by asking students to express their ideas about the driving question about an anchoring phenomenon: How does a radish plant grow, move, and function? In this unit, students learn to tell the story of how matter and energy are transformed as they move through plant systems. A particularly powerful strategy for explaining how plant systems transform matter and energy involves tracing carbon atoms.

Unit 4: Human Energy Systems

The goal of the Human Energy Systems unit is to introduce students to carbon cycling at a global scale and the implications of human fossil fuel use for climate change. Students:

Investigate patterns of change in Earth systems (global temperatures, global sea levels, Arctic sea ice, atmospheric CO₂) and use the Greenhouse Effect to explain how increases in greenhouse gas concentrations drive changes in other systems;

Explain how three key fluxes (photosynthesis, cellular respiration, combustion of fossil fuels) affect the atmospheric CO₂ pool;

Explain how human actions affect CO₂ fluxes; and

Predict effects of changes in human actions on the atmospheric CO₂

For more information on the curriculum we use at Hazen High School, please visit https://carbontime.create4stem.msu.edu/