ANTICIPATION GUIDE: PHOTOSYNTHESIS
Before each of the statements below, write agree / disagree in the blank space.
This exercise will be repeated after our study, and as a quiz.
1. __________ Plants need water to make sugars.
2. __________ Plants do photosynthesis in order to feed us.
3. __________ The entire process of Photosynthesis occurs only in the light.
4. __________ Plants use more green light than any other wavelength of light.
5. __________ Most of the oxygen on Earth comes from the rain forests.
6. __________ The purpose of photosynthesis is to produce glucose.
7. __________ The purpose of photosynthesis is to produce Oxygen.
8. __________ Plants use the oxygen that they produce.
9. __________ At night plants respirate (‘breath’) more rapidly.
10. _________ All organisms on earth depend on photosynthesis for energy.
11. _________ Carnivorous plants do not need to do photosynthesis.
12. _________ Plants get all their food from the soil.
Choose two statements you disagree with and explain your answer:
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
ANTICIPATION GUIDE: PHOTOSYNTHESIS
Before each of the statements below, write agree / disagree in the blank space.
This exercise will be repeated after our study, and as a quiz.
1. __________ Plants need water to make sugars.
2. __________ Plants do photosynthesis in order to feed us.
3. __________ The entire process of Photosynthesis occurs only in the light.
4. __________ Plants use more green light than any other wavelength of light.
5. __________ Most of the oxygen on Earth comes from the rain forests.
6. __________ The purpose of photosynthesis is to produce glucose.
7. __________ The purpose of photosynthesis is to produce Oxygen.
8. __________ Plants use the oxygen that they produce.
9. __________ At night plants respirate (‘breath’) more rapidly.
10. _________ All organisms on earth depend on photosynthesis for energy.
11. _________ Carnivorous plants do not need to do photosynthesis.
12. _________ Plants get all their food from the soil.
Choose two statements you disagree with and explain your answer:
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
1. Plants need water to make sugars.
2. Plants do photosynthesis in order to feed us.
3. The entire process of Photosynthesis occurs only in the
light.
4. Plants use more green light than any other wavelength of
light.
5. Most of the oxygen on Earth comes from the rain forests.
6. The purpose of photosynthesis is to produce glucose.
7. The purpose of photosynthesis is to produce Oxygen.
8. Plants use the oxygen that they produce.
9. At night plants respirate (‘breath’) more rapidly.
10. All organisms on earth depend on photosynthesis for
energy.
11. Carnivorous plants do not need to do photosynthesis.
12. Plants get all their food from the soil.
You have some good ideas here. If about labs - counting bubbles coming from an Elodea
plant is OK, though not easily assembled and not easy to make quantified. I like the
elodea in Bromothymol blue for showing the overall photosynthesis-respiration cycle,
and I think this is the most appropriate for middle school. (On a side note to Scott,
Bromothymol Blue simply measures pH, which is affected by CO2, not oxygen. The
more CO2, more HCO3- in the solution and the pH goes down, changing the indicator
from blue to yellow. Green is simply an intermediate level of CO2). My current
photosynthesis lab is the one with floating leaves of spinach or ivy.
The reason I like this lab most is the use of multiple leaf discs that each group uses. This
is the only experiment I have so far that shows experimental error so nicely. on the day
after the lab I make a discussion just about that, asking students to list as many variables
that they can think of that may have cause two leaf discs to give the same floating time,
even though 'on paper' they were supposed to be 'identical'. To maximize the lengths of
the lists I make it a competition between groups. I think we got so far up to 20-25
variables (age of leaves, size of discs, the position of the disc on the leaf...anything about
the experimenter in terms of handling the leaf discs, measuring the floating time, etc.
etc.). At the end of this students might think that with so many variables we do not have
control of, how can we ever conclude anything. So we open another discussion of how to
yet have significant results, and we get to increasing the number of repeats. But I think
this is more appropriate for high-schoolers. So for labs - I would use the bromothymol
blue.
Another thing to add is an anticipation guide I made and used last year. On the first day
of the unit, before instruction, I tell students to answer agree/disagree and explain at keast
two of their 'disagree' responses. As I go around the room i tell them how many mistakes
I see without telling them which are in error. AT the end of the unit I makes the same
exact handout into a quiz. This time they are expected to be correct in all responses. Of
course you might want to change some questions according to yourstudents' grade level.
Hope this helps,
-Michal Kreiselman, Ph.D.
Biology Teacher
Kennedy High-School
Granada Hills, CA
I really like the bromothymol blue stuff. It is an indicator that is blue when oxygen is present,
yellow when carbon dioxide is present, and green when there is a mixture. (The actual color change
isn't specific to these gases, rather it is acid/base influenced.) I like using aquatic plants to show how
they use carbon dioxide and make oxygen while in light. On top of this, you could also put animals
such a fish or snails into the solution to see how they make carbon dioxide.