Living Earth · Week 1 · Ecosystems: Interactions and Energy
Who Gets to Be a Scientist?
Students map the questions they already ask about the desert around them and name the scientist identity they bring into Living Earth.
- Students will
- Students ask testable questions about why desert organisms survive summer heat and describe the scientist identity they bring to biology.
- SEL skill
- Name your own curiosity and the scientist identity you bring to a question
- What it looks like
- Students recognize their own curiosity and name feelings that come with not knowing yet.
- Content focus
- Asking questions and scientist identity
- Format
- Think write pair share
Self-awareness
Self-awareness means recognizing your own emotions, thoughts, values, and strengths and seeing how they influence what you do. More self-awareness activities
What you get
A teacher guide with what to say, step by step, plus student pages and a supports page for students with diverse learning needs, including those with IEPs. Print or Project it, or assign it in Google Forms and Google Docs for Google Classroom. Your first 10 activities are free.
Standards
- HS-LS1-3: High School Life Science performance expectation
- Science and engineering practice: SEP1 Asking questions and defining problems
- Crosscutting concept: CCC1 Patterns
- Literacy in science: WHST.9-10.2 Write informative and explanatory texts, including scientific procedures and processes.
- Traditional course: Biology
More self-awareness activities for Living Earth
- Sunlight Into Sugar Self-awarenessModeling photosynthesis as an energy transformation and naming what refuels students' own energy.
- Clues in Shared Ancestry Self-awarenessComparing anatomical and DNA evidence for common ancestry and reflecting on the family and community roots students share.
- Semester Reflection: My Growth as a Scientist Self-awarenessStudents explain how the factors of evolution changed a real population, contrast that with how they grew as learners this semester, and set goals for the spring.
- The Code Inside Us Self-awarenessExplaining how DNA codes for proteins and reflecting on which traits are inherited and which are chosen.
Next: Who Eats Whom in the Desert
RoseThread Connect activities are drafted with the help of AI and shaped by educators. Students never have to share anything personal. Our five SEL skills are informed by CASEL's SEL Framework; RoseThread Learning is not affiliated with or endorsed by CASEL.