1. Essential Question:
How do cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems explain the complexity of living things?
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should introduce the essential question and the standard that aligns to the essential question.
Standard: S7L2c. Explain that cells are organized into tissues, tissues into organs, organs into systems, and systems into organisms.

2. Let’s Review
Turn to a seat partner and discuss the characteristics of living things.
Instructional Approach(s): Have students turn to a partner and discuss the characteristics of living things. Partners can be determined by the students or the teacher can provide more specific directions such as turn to the person directly in front/behind you or to the right/left of you, etc. It may be necessary to have a group of three if you have an uneven number of students. Do not allow more than 30 seconds to 1 minute of discussion time. The teacher should be walking around listening and redirecting discussions as needed. The teacher can briefly discuss student responses.

3. Which of the following are living?
Grass
Fire
Coal
Mushroom
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should click to show each object/living thing. Ask the class or call on specific students to identify if the object is living or non-living and why. Go through each object and discuss how you know it is living or non-living. Coal, fire, and gold are non-living. Grass, mushroom, and bacteria are living because living things have: organization, the ability to grow and develop, the ability to respond to the environment, and the ability to reproduce.
Bacteria
Gold

4. Activating Strategy: Look at the two living organisms below
Activating Strategy: Look at the two living organisms below. What makes organism A more complex than organism B?
Organism A
Organism B
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher will pose the question to the class. The teacher may ask the entire class or call on specific students to provide an answer. If possible, guide the class to the conclusion that Organism A has more (more organization, more components, etc.). Organism B has less organization and fewer components (is a paramecium which is unicellular). Today’s lesson will examine some of these differences.

5. Use the Levels of Organization Notes Organizer to take notes [put organizer together using teacher directions]
Instructional Approach(s): Give each student the Levels of Organization Notes Organizer. Students will need to cut out each section and staple them together to form sort of a flip book.

6. All living things are made of cells.
YouTube version [not as clear]:
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should present the statement. Ask the class “what are cells?” Watch the short video clip [2:54] to introduce students to cells.

7. Facts about Cells The cell is the smallest unit of a living thing.
Some organisms are made of a single cell [unicellular like Organism B in the previous slide]
Some organisms are made up of many cells [multicellular like Organism A in the previous slide]
Each cell whether part of a unicellular organism or a multicellular organism performs all the activities that characterize life.
Multicellular organisms are more complex than unicellular organisms [the horse is a more complex organism than the paramecium]
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should present the facts about cells while students summarize/record important information on the Cell portion of their organizer.

8. There are different types of cells in multicellular organisms.
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should present the information on the slide and use the diagram to show different types of cells.

9. Cells in a multicellular organism are specialized.
Muscle Cell
Cells in a multicellular organism are specialized.
The ways in which the cells work together and interact depend on the organism.
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should present the slide while the students record any important information on the Cell portion of their organizer. The teacher may want to ask students what “specialize” means and provide a few examples of being specialized. Students should have a general understanding of specialization from 6th and 7th grade social studies. Ask students to apply specialization to the human body and what it might mean.

10. Draw a simple illustration of a cell in your notes organizer.
Write Facts about Cells
Draw a simple illustration of a Cell
Instructional Approach(s): Students should draw a simple illustration of a cell on the Cell portion of their organizer. The teacher should facilitate the process. If needed, the teacher may want to go back to slide 8 to show students different examples of cells. If the teacher has an interactive board, several students can come up and draw an example of the cell on the board.

11. Muscle Tissue
In more complex organisms, cells are not only specialized but grouped together in tissues.
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should present the information while students write down important information about a tissue on the Tissue portion of their organizer.
A tissue is a group of similar cells that are organized to do a specific job.

12. Draw a simple illustration of a tissue in your notes organizer.
Write Facts about Tissue
Draw a simple illustration of a Tissue
Instructional Approach(s): Students should draw a simple illustration of a tissue on the Tissue portion of their organizer. The teacher should facilitate the process. If needed, the teacher may want to go back to slide 11 to show students an example of a tissue. If the teacher has an interactive board, several students can come up and draw an example of a tissue on the board.

13. Different tissues working together to perform a particular function represent another level of organization, the organ.
The Heart
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should present the information while students write down important information about an organ on the Organ portion of their organizer.

14. Other Organs
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should use the slide to illustrate other examples of organs.

15. Draw a simple illustration of an organ in your notes organizer.
Write Facts about an Organ
Draw a simple illustration of an Organ
Instructional Approach(s): Students should draw a simple illustration of an organ on the Organ portion of their organizer. The teacher should facilitate the process. If needed, the teacher may want to go back to slide 14 to show students an example of an organ. If the teacher has an interactive board, several students can come up and draw an example of an organ on the board.

16. The Circulatory System
Different organs and tissues working together form an organ system. An organism may have only a few organ systems.
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should present the information while students write down important information about an organ system on the Organ System portion of their organizer.

17. Other Organ Systems
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should use the slide to illustrate other examples of organ systems. Ask students to identify organ systems if possible in the image.

18. The organism itself represents the highest level of organization.
If an organism is complex, it will consist of trillions of cells grouped into tissues, organs, and organ systems.
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should present the information on the slide while the students record important information on the Organism portion of their organizer.
If an organism is simple, it meets its needs with a body made up of only a few types of specialized cells.

19. Cell Tissue Organ Organ System Organism
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should use the pyramid to review the levels of organization from smallest level to the largest level. The teacher may add the pyramid to the back of the organizer if desired.

20. Levels of Organization
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should use the diagram to reinforce the levels of organization in the body from the smallest part (cell) to the largest part (organism).

21. Optional Review Activities [see resources]
Levels of Organization Sort
Levels of Organization Review
Onion and Cheek Cell Lab or view microscope slides of cells
Instructional Approach(s): The teacher should use one or two of the review activities if needed.

22. Summarizing Strategy
Which of the following shows the correct representation of the levels of organization in a multicellular organism?
Instructional Approach(s): Each student should complete the summarizer. The teacher should use the summarizer to determine student mastery of the content and if differentiation is needed.