I wonder how Manduca breathe...

Lesson Overview:  

Teacher will place a Manduca in water for the class to see and speculate how the Manduca breathes. They will then look for differences and similarities between the way humans breathe and the way other creatures do.

Objectives:

1. speculate as to how Manduca breathe
2. try to support their speculations with observations
3. explain what they believe they are seeing
4. confirm or change their knowledge about how the Manduca breathes
5. consider the way that other creatures breathing differs or is similar to humans.

Subject Area Focus: science & language arts

Materials:

•  journals
• glass of water
• Teacher's Manduca
• board/overhead

Procedure:

1. Students should complete their daily observations and record them in their observation journals.
2. The teacher ask the students:
   - What do you know about how humans breathe?
   Have an open class discussion where students are able to speculate what they think. Record as a class list, if teacher desires.
3. In your observation journal describe in three or four sentences how you think Manduca breathes. List observations of your Manduca that have helped you come to this conclusion.
4. Teacher will drop a Manduca in a glass of water.
   Hint: Think about what happens when a human goes underwater.
5. After watching the experiment, record observations in the observation journal. Did the experiment change your mind? What observations made you change your mind?
6. As a class, discuss experiment observations and hypothesis.
7. Teacher should clarify how Manduca breathes, in case some students do not understand even after the experiment. Students should record this information in their observation journal.
8. At this point the teacher could reference the Everything You Want to Know section under the All About Manduca tab. This section provides an excellent description of Manduca respiratory system. The teacher can copy an paste the information onto a word document prior to the lesson or showcase this particular section using the internet on a classroom computer screen.
9. A class brainstorming session should be held to try and list all of the animals that breath the same as humans, and all of the other animals students think breathe by a different type of system than humans.
10. As a class, discuss why some animals breathe differently than humans.
11. If there are animals on the list that some students are uncertain about the student who provided the animal should be told that they need to prove their statement in some way.
    * As a possible extra credit assignment students could bring in or provide information about one of the animals from the brainstorm list.