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OPENERS:

• Show Glencoe's Video launcher movie, "Identifying Living Things", and then ask students to determine, "Are flames alive?"

• Have students read, "Is Sammy Alive?", and then write a paper on when life actually ends.

• Show the Discovery video, "Characteristics of Life", to introduce characteristics of all living things.
• Give students the Think Quest handout on "What's Life?".
• Demonstrate the characteristics of life with Flinn Scientifics' "Glue Monsters: Are They Alive?" 
• Start a discussion of life with golden raisins and Sprite using Flinn Scientifics' demonstration "Sewer Lice"

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COLORING/GAMES/PUZZLES:

• Have students use this word scramble puzzle, Introduction to Biology.  Answers are included.

• Characteristics of Life crossword puzzle helps students learn the traits shared by all living things.

• Review students with this Introduction jeopardy game.

• Play the Quia matching game Characteristics of life or Glencoe's online Crossword puzzle.

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WORKSHEETS/HANDOUTS:

• Intro to Biology Review

• Characteristics of Life worksheet has students read and answer questions about life's characteristics and organization levels.

• Handout - Biological levels of Organization

• Handout - Mrs. Nerg uses an acronym to remember characteristics of living things. Have students make up their own acronyms.

• Have students use the concepts in the first chapter to make a biology song. A great site for this is Biology Songs.

• Use this Characteristics of Life Concept Map to help students learn these concepts.

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POWERPOINTS/NOTES:

• This is a good presentation to use to introduce the study of biology, Ch 1 Introduction to Biology PowerPoint & Questions for students to answer during the showing.

• Introduction - Study of Life notes can be given as a handout or students can copy notes in class.

• Prentice-Hall Textbook has a great PowerPoint, "The Science of Biology".

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LABS/PROJECTS:

• What makes something alive is the controversy in The Martian and the Car

• NASA has a great activity book called, "Astrobiology" that deals with life on Earth and other planets.

• A fun lab to show life at a simple level is Is Yeast Alive? and Teacher's notes.

• NOVA has a good group activity involved with creating a timeline for life entitled, "Origins --- How Life Began".

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TEST PREP:

• Use one of these practice quizzes to prepare for testing --- Introduction to Biology, Introduction to Biology (harder), or Introduction to Biology (hardest)

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VIDEOS, INTERACTIVES, & ANIMATIONS

You will need to download Adobe Shockwave Player and Adobe Flash Player to use these interactives.  If you still are unable to view the interactives, download and view them in Mozilla Firefox browser instead of IE. Don't know why, but it works!

• Scientific Method Interactive

• Characteristics of Life Interactive

• Biological Hierarchy Interactive

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GREAT LINKS:

• Check out Thinkquest's The Living Universe.

• View the Java script, "The Universe Within," that takes you on a trip from the outermost parts of the universe to Earth.

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