Middle School Inquiry Lab on External Responses in Homeostasis
In this lab students will observe how a mealworm responds to stimuli and maintains homeostasis. Students will consider if these stimuli are beneficial or harmful for the mealworm.
Each inquiry lab will contain an essential question that will drive the lesson and make students think. For this lesson, the essential question is:
- How do organisms respond to external stimuli in order to maintain homeostasis?
BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND MATERIALS LIST:
Students will begin the lab by reading the essential question and background information. This can be done individually, as lab groups, or as a whole class. If you consider lab groups, you also might include some type of whole class formative checks before digging into the lab.
Materials List:
- mealworms
- pen Light
- petri dish or shallow plate
- pencil
- bran flakes
- ice water
- dropper
PROCEDURE:
For this lab, students will conduct a series of stimuli to a live mealworm. The stimuli include touch, light, temperature, and food. Students will record what the immediate response initiated and whether the stimulus was beneficial or harmful.
CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING:
At this point in the lab, students will be checked for understanding by answering questions about their findings. Here is one that comes with the lab:
- What is homeostasis and what happens if it is not maintained in the mealworm?
CONCLUSION
Students will go back to the essential question and write a CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) to conclude the lab. Once completed, students will reflect back on their learning by answering the following questions:
- Give two examples of homeostasis in plants.
- Why is homeostasis unique to each organism?
- When an organism seeks shelter from weather conditions, it is displaying what form of homeostasis?
MODIFIED AND INDEPENDENT INQUIRY VERSIONS
All of the Kesler Science inquiry labs come with three different modification levels. Each lab is differentiated using the icons below.
STANDARDS ALIGNMENT
TEKS: 7.13A – Investigate how organisms respond to external stimuli found in the environment such as phototropism and fight or flight.
