MAKING SENSE OF THE LIVING WORLD: LEVEL 5

ACHIEVEMENT OBJECTIVES

Students can:

investigate, and classify in broad terms, the living world at a microscopic level, e.g., protists, plant and animal cells;
investigate and describe structural, physiological, and behavioural adaptations which ensure the survival of animals and flowering plants in their environment, e.g., the organ systems which animals use to locate, catch (or harvest), eat, digest, transport, and use food; territoriality; social behaviour; photosynthesis; osmosis; transpiration;
investigate patterns in the inheritance of genetically controlled characteristics and explain the importance of variation within a changing environment, e.g., simple monohybrid genetics, human reproduction, genetically controlled human characteristics such as eye colour, asexual and sexual reproduction in plants;
investigate and understand trophic and nutrient relationships between producers, consumers, and decomposers.

Note: Detailed knowledge of the biochemical processes of respiration and photosynthesis is not expected.

Students could be learning by:

using a microscope to locate the nucleus in plant and animal cells;
caring for a hearing- or vision-impaired peer for a day to appreciate the needs of others;
dissecting a sheep's pluck obtained from an abattoir to get a better understanding of the structure of organs;
debating the topic 'Organ transplants are worth the expense' to help clarify ideas and feelings about a current scientific issue;
doing experiments which investigate the process of food digestion;
comparing teeth of herbivores and carnivores to make inferences about how and what they eat;
observing ants to investigate division of labour in a colony;
surveying physical differences of class members to collect data on human variation;
recording statistical data of continuous and discrete variation in the class population;
drawing a family tree of European royal families to show the genetic transfer of haemophilia through the generations;
designing 'fair tests' to investigate their ideas about the factors, such as light intensity, affecting the rate of photosynthesis;
carrying out investigations regarding the conditions required for photosynthesis;
drawing a concept map to show how carbon is transferred through an ecosystem;
designing a game to show how oxygen is cycled through an agricultural ecosystem;
drawing energy pyramids for selected ecosystems.

Teachers and students could assess the students':

ability to distinguish the differences in cell structure, that is, cell wall, chloroplasts, vacuole, when the students sketch and label diagrams of typical plant and animal cells from microscopic observation;
ability to use a classification key, when the students are asked to identify some given microscopic animals;
ability to identify and relate adaptive features to survival, when the students write a report about the adaptations of rock crabs;
understanding of the structure of the human digestive and circulatory systems, when the students assemble and label models of these;
knowledge of the process of sexual reproduction, when the students describe the functions of labelled parts on diagrams of the human reproductive systems;
ability to organise and present data, when the students construct graphs to present the results of measurements taken in class to illustrate variation in an inherited characteristic;
knowledge of how carbon is transferred through an ecosystem, when the students draw a labelled diagram showing the components of the carbon cycle;
ability to control variables, when they are testing their predictions about how temperature changes affect the rate of photosynthesis.