Middle School Life Science

Respiration: How Organisms Use Food

The food a cell makes, it also burns.

Move the same Algae Beads into the dark and the indicator swings back the other way. The algae are using the food they made, and students watch it happen. A sealed brine shrimp bag shows an animal doing the same thing with the oxygen around it.

Buy the Algae Beads kit Back to Middle School

MS-LS1-7 NGSS, grades 6 to 8

8.13.A Texas, grade 8

SC.8.L.18.2 Florida, grade 8

How the lab meets it

What students do that satisfies the standard

Grades 6-8

NGSS MS-LS1-7

Standard: Develop a model to describe how food is rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support growth and/or release energy as this matter moves through an organism.\nWhat the kit does: Light and dark vials side by side give students the two halves of the model, food made and food used, with a color they can record.

Grade 8

Texas 8.13.A

Standard: Identify the function of the cell membrane, cell wall, nucleus, ribosomes, cytoplasm, mitochondria, chloroplasts, and vacuoles in plant or animal cells.\nWhat the kit does: The dark vials show the algae giving off carbon dioxide as they use their food, which is the job of the mitochondria. Students pair that with the light vials to set mitochondria next to chloroplasts. Honest fit: partial. Texas does not name cellular respiration in grades 6 to 8. This is the closest it gets, through the function of the mitochondria.

Grade 8

Florida SC.8.L.18.2

Standard: Describe and investigate how cellular respiration breaks down food to provide energy and releases carbon dioxide.\nWhat the kit does: In the dark the indicator shows carbon dioxide building up in the water as the algae break down the food they made. Students record the change, so the carbon dioxide part of the benchmark comes straight from their own data. Florida places respiration in 8th grade.

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