Course: Block Biology Date:

Unit: Bundle 1.5 Title: Characteristics of Life – Campground

Tragedy

Objective:
- Determine the cause of a mystery illness by
using different sampling techniques and
characteristics of living/non-living things.
- Use evidence of characteristics of life to
construct an argument
Standards:
 Science and Engineering Practices:
1) Constructing explanations (for science)
and designing solutions (for
engineering)
2) Engaging in argument from evidence
 Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating
information

Activities/Procedures: Review:
- Camp medical form/interviews/map -
- Water samples under microscope
- Koch’s Postulate Lab
- Living vs. Nonliving – CER
- Motion Memory (char. of life)
- Techniques station lab
- Student lab design – purpose/procedure/data
tables

I. Background
 Camp medical form
 Independent reading  table/partner discussion  class discussion
 Make observations/brainstorm ideas about what is causing illness
 What information do we need? (leads into interviews)
 Lead discussion into determining possible causes of the sickness/deaths
 Categorize student responses
 Lead group into determining it is related to digestive system

 Camp Interviews
 Read/highlight/write notes in margins
 Individual  group  report out
 Observations
 Teacher will keep track of student observations on board
 Map
 More data on the campsite tragedy
 Label north toilet, south toilet, upstream, downstream, north well, south well

II. Starting Research

 Where to begin:
o Students suggest water/food because of digestive system
 Look at water samples
 Have water samples from the 6 areas we looked at on map
o Toilet
 Digestive issues end up here!
 “Control”  if you find similarities between toilet water and other
sources, may be suspicious.
  Water samples
o How do we best examine water samples?
o Note similarities between all of them (macroscopic)
o Lead in to microscopes

III. Microscopes
 Draw field of view for each sample
 Table: describe what is in each sample
o What samples have the mysterious circles?

IV. The Mystery Circles

 Are the circles causing the illness?
o How can we figure this out?
 Koch’s Postulate
 Notes
o Purpose: to establish a causal relationship between pathogen and disease
 Find candidate bacterium in every case of disease
 Isolate bacterium from host, grow in pure culture
 Show that cultured bacteria cause illness in healthy subject
 Isolate bacterium from experimental subject
 Koch’s Postulate lab (Test of Unknown Contaminate)
o The circles did kill the rats/caused similar symptoms  most likely the cause

 What are the circles?

o Circles are most likely causing the illness  What do we do?
 Figure out what they are so we can get rid of them
o Generate ideas with groups and report out.
o Teacher: categorize responses
 Living vs. Nonliving
 Virus, protist, fungus, bacteria, chemical
 How do we determine what it is? (Narrow down list)
 Can eliminate a couple possibilities if we determine what is living/nonliving

V. Living vs. Nonliving (Characteristics of Life)

 Discussion: CER (Living/Nonliving)
o Whiteboard group activity:
 Explain CER process
 Each group will be given an item (easy or challenging if they want it)
 Must decide if it is living, non-living, or once part of a living thing
 Make a claim, cite evidence, connect with reasoning.
 Discussion will center around what students come up with
o Generate characteristics of life
o 8 Characteristics of Life
 o Bondy’s Motion Memory (8) – note sheet
 All living things are made of _______Make a circle with hands (cells with genetic material)
 Displays organization (file cabinet)
 Grow and develop (Mario)
 Reproduces (rock baby)
 Responds to stimuli (shiver)
 Requires energy (run in place) (eat/require nutrients/metabolism/require energy)
 Maintains homeostasis
 Maintaining specific internal environment (temperature)
 Adapt (monkey)

VI. Determining if Circles are Living

 Techniques Stations Lab – test out different ways we can see if something is living
 Groups rotate around 5 stations
o Testing for CO2 with BTB
o Looking at staining techniques and indicators
o Looking at plating techniques for growing cultures
o Testing for the presence of salt with silver nitrate (demo)
o Looking at pH indicators/testing for acids and bases

VII. Design a Lab

 Create an experiment (based on VI) to figure out if the circles are living or not.
 Prove 3 characteristics of life in your lab
o Need a purpose (determine if circles are living or not)
o Give background information (using alive lab intro information)
o Need a well-explained procedure
o Need to create blank data tables
 Teacher will pick the most feasible labs to demo to class if time (BTB)

VIII. The Circles are ALIVE

 Return to list of living things – bacteria, protists, fungi, virus?
o How can we determine what our circles are?
 We know the circles are living
 We know the circles thrive in water (based on the water samples we looked at)]
 Give them features of the mystery circle
 Fill out chart of living things (mystery circles)
o Compare and contrast different organisms
 Have groups students research possible candidates matching description
o Autopsy report

IX. Characteristics of Life/Koch’s Postulates Quiz