Micro-teaching Lesson Plan
ECS 350
Cole Hintz
CONCEPT ATTAINMENT LESSON PLAN
Subject Area:
Science
Grade Level:
11
Specific Content: Vascular vs. nonvascular
Length of Lesson: 10minutes
Instructional Objective(s):
3.1 Compare nonvascular and vascular plants.
3.2 Identify, describe, and collect some examples of nonvascular and vascular plants.
Curriculum Objective: Describe the diversity of plants; To develop an understanding of how knowledge
is created, evaluated, refined, and changed within biology ie. The Nature of Science. . Really – this is it???
I feel for an unit there should be more than this…
Why is the Content of Today’s Lesson Relevant for Your Students?
Plants provide us with one of our largest sources of food. Students are surrounded by both
vascular and non-vascular plants. This lesson will help students understand the differences
between the two By understanding the differences students can understand the needs of both and
what that implies for future food supplies.
Ok – sure – but so what? What does the difference mean to them…
Model of Teaching:
Concept Attainment
Vascular - Vascular plants (also known as tracheophytes or higher plants) are those plants that have
lignified tissues for conducting water, minerals, and photosynthetic products through the plant.
Non-Vascular - Non-vascular plants is a general term for those plants without a vascular system (xylem
and phloem). Although non-vascular plants lack these particular tissues, a number of non-vascular plants
possess tissues specialized for internal transport of water.
Vascular
Gymnosperms
Angiosperms
Tracheophyta
Ferns
Xylem and phloem
Non-Vascular
Mosses (Bryophyta)
Liverworts (Marchantiophyta)
Hornworts (Anthocerotophyta)
Algae
**include numerous pictures of both on poster paper(pictures, slide-views, as well as
cross sections, etc.
Lesson: (allow for discussion after each example)
Engaging beginning: Tell the class that we are going to come to develop an understanding of two concepts
together by working through a list of examples. Share the story on algae as food supply and tell students we
are going to develop an understanding together as to how algae is different from some of the more typical
‘plants’.
 Show students a list of scientific names and ask them what the difference is.
 Proceed to add the common names to the list.
 Add pictures of the plants
 Add pictures of the internal structure of the plants.
- Students at this point should be able to identify that there is xylem and phloem in the vascular
examples but not in the non-vascular examples. Questions to identify what this difference
Micro-teaching Lesson Plan
ECS 350
Cole Hintz
means building to an understanding of vascular and non-vascular (ie. Vascular means
vessels).
I think you need to support students to come up with the language (of vascular and non-vascular)
and to do something with the lists of differences…
Closure: Have students provide an example of and place where they have seen a vascular and a nonvascular plant.
Are Algae the DIY Answer to Fuel & Food Crises?; A.C. Chen; Shareable: Science and Tech;
http://shareable.net/blog/is-algae-the-shareable-answer-to-food-energy-crises
Alice Chen: How did you get interested in algae?
Aaron Baum: As a scientist, I'm completely committed to doing good things for the environment. I earned
my Phd in applied physics from Stanford in 1997 and worked for several years in Silicon Valley as a
program manager on technologies I developed in graduate school. I realized I was working my butt off to
make computer chips run faster. I kind of lost faith in what I was doing.
I dropped out of that field, worked as an artist for several years and realized I miss science -- the
intellectual challenge and making contributions and changing peoples' lives. I decided to get back into
science on my own terms.
I thought about it for a long time and decided I wanted to work in a field where I could be sure I was doing
something good for the world. I started doing a lot of research four years ago and after a few months, algae
started to stick up out above everything else. Back then if you searched for algae, what came up was how to
kill algae and how bad it was because of algae blooms. That was happening for a while but now it's
exponentially worse. I started working in that area. Now if you search for algae (online), about half of what
you find is good.
AC: What's so great about algae?
AB: Algae is a way to grow really high quality food in a small area, on the surface of a body of water or in
wastewater. Or you can grow algae in dilute urine which is an easy way to get the right nutrients and reduce
your impact on the environment.
Most marine biologists consider that the number one danger to marine life is eutrophication, an excess of
nutrients in the water from agricultural runoff due to application fertilizer. When it hits the ocean or lake,
there are massive algae blooms. When they decay, they wipe out oxygen and everything dies.
If you can find a way to keep nutrients out of water, you reduce the size of dead zones. You can create
controlled algae blooms, harvest algae and eliminate nutrients that way. Or you can take wastewater, give it
to algae directly and absorb nutrients. You come out with clean water, fuel, food, fertilizer and extra
oxygen. And on a small scale in your own house if you grow it in dilute urine, you reduce the fertilizer load
on the local ecosystem.
Micro-teaching Lesson Plan
ECS 350
Cole Hintz
IMG_5964
AC: Tell me about algae as food. Why are people so into it?
AB: The idea was first proposed in the 1930s in Germany. They were trying to develop it for growing food.
You can grow a lot of food in a small area. It's extremely nutritious on a gram-for-gram basis. You can mix
it in with other food. It didn't take off until spirulina in the 1970s. Now there's chlorella.
Normally you get spirulina in a powder or pill form. It's grown in large outdoor ponds normally, and you
sieve it out of water. It's kind of special. It grows in corkscrew filaments making it relatively easy to strain
out of water using a special fabric. Most other kinds of algae are too small and roundish, very difficult to
filter.
Algae as a food is extremely healthy. It's high in complete protein, antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids, and
it's effective against infections. It has defenses against viruses and you can acquire defenses as well. It's
good to protect against environmental toxins. There were dozens of experiments where they fed rats a
regular diet and another group with spirulina. They exposed them to mercury, lead, pesticides, radiation and
mutagens and found that spirulina-eating rats do much better.
In powder form, spirulina's great, but when you want to eat a blueberry, you don't want it powdered. You
want it fresh. You can eat fresh spirulina that's basically alive. It tastes better.
AC: What does it taste like?
AB: The problem with most algae is it tastes like seaweed. A lot of people are not turned on by that taste. I
think it's really good in certain dishes. When you eat it live, fresh, the taste is much lighter, creamy, and
Micro-teaching Lesson Plan
ECS 350
Cole Hintz
buttery. You can spread it on crackers. We mix it with brown rice and guacamole so it's vegan. The easiest
way is in carrot juice.
IMG_0198
AC: Is anyone else doing what you're doing?
AB: We're at the very beginning of growing it. A few people have worked on it. Some people in France
grow spirulina on a small scale in their house. Outside of France, there's been very little work. I'm not
aware of anyone in the U.S. working on it other than us.
AC: Why haven't more people already started growing algae in their homes?
AB: There are technical barriers. You need to grow live spirulina. You need a seed reactor, a nutrient mix
to put in the water and a special cloth. You must maintain proper balance between acidity and alkalinity,
and the proper temperature. What I'm doing is putting together a kit to provide live spirulina.
AC: How is this a communal project?
AB: I'm starting out by building the community and showing people how they can do it themselves. We'll
do it together and share information through our website.
Previously we built a whole algae lab all based on volunteer labor. We built it for about 1,000 times less
money than what we spend in places like NASA. What we're aiming to do is cultivate algae based on free
material. We grow algae and are investigating it as fertilizer, biofuel, and growing it in dilute urine.
Micro-teaching Lesson Plan
ECS 350
Cole Hintz
We'd like to create an international network of people growing all kinds of algae in their homes in a small
community scale, sharing information, doing it all in an open source way. We'd be like the linux of algae –
do-it-yourself with low-cost materials and shared information.
I get emails from all over world. There's been a huge wave of interest in algae, driven by biofuels and by
the growing awareness of the lack of farmland. If you want to make new farmland, you have to destroy
ecosystems. The biggest impact humans have on the world is through agriculture. If we want to grow more
food so people can eat better, we either destroy the last remaining ecosystems on the planet or find a new
way to do things.
AC: What's the market like for spirulina?
AB: The world consumes about 100,000 tons of spirulina a year. It's used for animal feed and it's a
nutraceutical (that is, a food that provides health benefits). It's kind of expensive, usually about $80 per
pound for powder. It's a very nutrient dense food. When I eat spirulina – I eat vegan – I don't have cravings
for meat or sugar. Food is more satisfying when it has spirulina. I eat a lot, 15 grams a day. Most people
would consider 5 grams a day to be fairly high. If you're eating 10 grams a day, you're spending about $200
a year on it.
AC: How did you transition into algae as a career?
AB: I got interested in algae and decided to create an algae farm project at Burning Man in 2007. I got
together a community of people and we created an installation on a trailer. We had 16 bioreactors with live
algae that was eating the exhaust of a generator. They grew great – it was very successful. We had a lot of
educational material. There were big posters jammed full of text explaining what we were doing and why it
was interesting.
I've worked at the Exploratorium. They'll tell you that anything beyond one to two sentences, there's no
way you're going to get anyone in the public to read anything more than that. On the night of the Burn, the
Micro-teaching Lesson Plan
ECS 350
Cole Hintz
craziest night of all with partying and dancing, I went to the installation. We had forgotten to turn the lights
on. In the dark, I was surrounded by people all using headlamps, leaning close and reading every single
word we'd written. As soon as they knew I was part of it, they started peppering me with questions. A guy
from NASA was inspired by this project and then joined the OMEGA project. And then he gave me a call.
LabBench
AC: What are you doing for NASA?
AB: We're developing large-scale systems that are combining biofuel and fertilizer production with
wastewater treatment and production of fresh air and fresh water. We're using large membrane enclosures
floating in bodies of water. It's a low-energy, low-resource way of growing algae.
One budding thing of NASA technology – we're working on a clever way of removing algae from water.
We're focused on the biofuel aspect at NASA. For biofuel, you want a species that produces a lot of oil.
Many species of algae can produce huge amounts of oil -- they can be more than 50 percent oil by weight,
compared to normal plants that only produce a few percent.
Algae can produce about 100 times more than typical oil plants like soybeans, on a per acre basis. You can
grow enough algae to replace all of the fossil fuel in an area that's small enough to be manageable. You
don't need to use farmland, there's not much remaining in the world ready to be used, and you don't need
fresh water. The nice thing about algae is while they cleans water and air, they can produce very valuable
things like fuel, fertilizer and food. They're precursers for bioplastics, cosmetics and medicines.
It's a new kind of farming, potentially very low impact and sustainable.
Micro-teaching Lesson Plan
ECS 350
Cole Hintz
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AC: So what's your vision -- to see every household have algae?
AB: I don't see why not. It should be easier than a vegetable plot. Algae is such a super food. It's so
productive on a daily basis that with one tank in a window you can significantly supplement the diet of one
person. If you use a whole window, you could probably do two to three tanks year round and have even
more. Every day you could be eating algae.
Algae is an incredible resource we haven't tapped into. Human beings haven't gone there yet because it's
microscopic. I didn't know what algae were until quite a bit later in life. They don't really teach you about it
in school. It produces approximately 70 percent of the oxygen we breathe. It's the basis of 95 percent of life
that's in oceans.
Even people with no dirt can grow fresh food for themselves. If you're in an apartment complex on the 25th
floor, you can still grow fresh food.