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Session 1. What Is Life?
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Boy with "green stuff" |
Learning
Goals
During this session, you will have an opportunity to
build understandings to help you:
- Distinguish between living, dead, and nonliving
- Define the characteristics of life
Video Overview
What
is life? This question at first seems deceptively simple — we
all know how to recognize what is living and what is not. Or
do we? What are the characteristics of all living things, and how do
we know
if an object really possesses those characteristics? This session
explores how the concept “life” can
be defined.
View this video==> 
Video Outline
We open with a look at environments where you wouldn’t
expect to find life and pose the question: If you are looking for life,
what do you look for? Dr. Herbert Thier, representing the Science
Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS3+), emphasizes the importance
of building understandings of the concept “life” in the
early elementary grades as a foundation for the development of
ideas in life science throughout the elementary school years and beyond.
The program continues as children in grades two and three
are presented with a challenge: group objects as living, dead
or nonliving. In what is called the “Science Studio,” the
children are observed and interviewed in a clinical setting to
uncover their
ideas about these three concepts. Throughout the course, the
Science Studio
is a place where research on children’s
ideas is
brought to life.
In
Brooklyn, New York, we visit LauraJo Kelly and
her second-grade students as they generate their own definitions of
living, dead, and nonliving and proceed to design experiments to test
whether a “mysterious” object is alive. An interview with Dr. Gary Ruvkun,
who is leading a team of researchers to determine whether life exists
on Mars, tells us what he considers to be the best sign of life.
Our search for an answer
to the question "What is life?" leads
us to consider five characteristics that are shared by all living
things. One characteristic — cells — introduces
us to the fundamental unit of life. We also look more closely
at the matter that composes life and see the role played by organic
molecules,
such as the hereditary molecule DNA.
Finally, Dr. Paul Williams introduces us to
an ongoing Web site-based activity — Bottle
Biology — that is meant to provide you with an opportunity
to apply ideas addressed during this session as well as act as a resource
for K-6 classroom activities.
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