A LESSON PLAN ON THE BIOLOGY EXPERIMENT CARRIED OUT BY PORTUGAL

Objectives

Students will be able to:

1. recognize that carbon is an extremely common element and can be found in many forms, in both living

and non-living things.

2. recognize that carbon moves between the Earth’s four spheres.

3. articulate some ways that carbon impacts us and the earth.

Materials

What Contains Carbon? worksheet (1 per student)

seashell

piece of wood

plastic

fabric

carbonated beverage

cup of water

Teacher Prep

1. Collect the materials as a class set.

2. Print out one worksheet for each student.

Introduction

1. Assess students’ prior knowledge of carbon via a class discussion or word map.

2. As you explain its status as an element, highlight diamonds and graphite in their pencils as examples of

pure carbon with vastly different properties.

3. Explain that carbon combines easily with many other elements to form other substances with different

properties. For example, carbon can combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide (shake carbonated

beverage or have them breathe out to highlight that it’s a gas).

4. Let them know that carbon can be found in both living and non-living things. Today’s essential question:

Do these everyday objects contain carbon, or not?

Activity

1. Pass out a What Contains Carbon? worksheet to each student. At first, have students work individually to decide whether they think each object contains carbon or not. Emphasize that they need to provide an explanation for their conclusion.

2. Divide students into six groups and assign each group an object. Have students come to a group conclusion about whether the object contains carbon and their explanation.

3. Have each group report out. If the students don’t have a conclusion or the group is split, ask them how they could find out what the answer is.

4. Guide students in understanding how each of the objects contains carbon, drawing from prior knowledge. See the teacher background section for details.

5. Challenge students to look around the classroom from their seats and fill in the last three rows of the worksheet with other carbon-containing items in the classroom that they use on a daily basis.

Quick sort

1. As a class, classify the objects into living and non-living groups, including things that used to be alive as living. (You can classify the seashell and the wood as living and the plastic, fabric, water, and carbonated beverage as non-living.)

2. Discuss man-made objects like plastic, fabric, and the carbonated beverage. Discuss where the carbon in these objects comes from in order to emphasize how carbon can move around. The carbon in fabric may have come from living plants (cotton), petroleum (polyester or acrylic), or animals (wool or silk).

Plastic came from hydrocarbons, which were formed millions of years ago from living things. CO in carbonated beverage is from the atmosphere.