1. ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS ASSIGNMENT BY GIANA IANNACONE

2. What do we know about the structure of living things? I know that all living things are made up of cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems. Tissues are made up of many of the same type of cells. When all different types of tissues join together, an organ is made. An organ system is made when all different organs join together. For living things to survive, all of the organ systems must work together. For the digestive system to work you need the mouth to break down the food, the stomach to digest it, the intestines to get out the nutrients and then the heart to pump the blood so the nutrients can get where they need to go. If one of these does not do their job and work together, something will go wrong and therefore, the body would not survive. This is the same with all other systems. An example of a cell would be a skin cell. When a group of skin cells join, they form a skin tissue (epithelial tissue). When skin tissue joins with other tissues such as fat tissue and muscle tissue you get an organ known as the stomach. The stomach organ is joined with the intestines and other organs to form the digestive system.

3. How do we know what we know about the structure of living things? We know what we know about the structure of living things because of many reasons. One of them is because in class we do dissections. One day we had to dissect a frog and a chicken wing. This helps us know what we know about the human body because the frog has the same systems as we do and that helps me understand where the systems are and how they work together. We also went to the bodies exhibit in New York City where we saw real human bodies. Since we were able to look inside of them and see actual tissues, organs, and organ systems, I now understand what is inside my body and why they are placed where they are. That is how we know all the things we know about the structure of living things.

4. How do we know that what we know about the structure of living things is correct? We know that what we know about the structure of living things is correct because after doing labs and dissections we share our results with other groups. If we get different answers then we go back and do the lab again. Also, we can check our answers using the internet and look back at the bodies exhibit to base our answers of the presentations that were there and use that to double check our answers.

5. What do we do to improve and/or revise what we know about the structure of living things? When we go over our answers with the class, if something is not accurate we go back and redo our lab, dissection, or research. Also if we want to revise something and make it better we could look back on other logs and research more information so we understand the topic more and have more knowledge to redo whatever needs revising. We could even go back and redo our lab, but this time pay closer attention so it will be correct. Doing labs and projects more than once helps us because the second time we do it we will have more and better answers because we learned more things since the last time we did the project. It is very important to know when we need to revise and why it is good to revise and improve our work.

6. How does our understanding of the structure of living things help us understand the natural world? Our understanding of the structure of living things helps us understand the world because now if something goes wrong in my body I understand what is wrong, why, and how to fix it. Also, I know how to stay healthy and understand why the human body is set up the way it is and that it is very important that the parts on the body work together. I have learned so many new things and now understand our world and the human body a lot better and clearer now.