Life Science Current Events
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What is Life Science?

Before beginning this lesson plan on life science current events, your students first need to understand what life science is. Describe life science to your students as a branch of science that studies living things. Some examples of the various branches of life since are anatomy, physiology and zoology.

Ask your students what they think of when they think of current events in this area of science. Some topics that may be mentioned are provided in the list below.

  • cloning
  • DNA testing
  • cancer research

These are all topics that are currently active in the media. The goal, however, is for the students to dig a little deeper and look a little closer to home because these topics that are listed above are not knocking at their front door. One of the best ways to get a student interested in a topic is by bringing it home to them. Read on to the next section to learn how we will do that.

Life Science in the Home Environment

This is a lesson plan that can be used once or used every week as a weekly assignment. On Friday of every week, introduce your students to a new branch or concept of life science. After giving them a full description of this branch and concept, ask them to consider the topic over the weekend. Students should observe the world around them and how life science is currently participating in it. They should focus on the topic discussed in class. Ask students to write a brief essay over the weekend that describes current events in their world. The essay should include the following information.

  • What is the current event being described?
  • Which branch of life science is involved in this event?
  • How does the event currently differ from what it would have been had some branch of life science not been involved. (As an example, if there was a trip to the hospital that weekend, how would that incident have been effected in the past or if there was no form of life science?)

Asking students to thoughtfully consider life science current events not only allows them to develop an interest in the topic based on their own individual lives, but it also allows them to look at life from the perspective of a scientist in a somewhat limited format.

This post is part of the series: Life Science Lesson Plans

Use these life science lesson plans to introduce some of the basic concepts of life science to your students.

  1. What is Life Science?
  2. Basics of Life Science: Project Idea for Teaching Challenging Concepts
  3. Life Science Lesson Plan for Organ Systems
  4. Life Science Current Events - A Lesson Plan for the Classroom