Plants catch energy from sunlight and lock it into food. Everything else alive is spending energy a plant caught first.
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Students will learn that producers capture light energy through photosynthesis, that consumers must eat to get energy, and that cells release the energy stored in glucose through cellular respiration or, without oxygen, through fermentation.
Metabolism is the total of all the activities that keep an organism alive. Producers make their own food; consumers cannot and must eat. Photosynthesis uses light energy to build glucose from carbon dioxide and water, giving off oxygen.
Cellular respiration is close to the reverse: it breaks glucose down using oxygen and releases the stored energy, giving off carbon dioxide and water. Fermentation releases energy from glucose without oxygen, but far less of it.
The single most useful question here is “where did that energy come from before it was in you?” Keep asking it backwards through a meal until you arrive at sunlight. Students who can run that chain understand the lesson even if they mix up the words.
Photosynthesis and respiration are easy to confuse because they are near opposites. Build them side by side on paper rather than one after the other, and have the student point at which one gives off oxygen and which one uses it.
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Before You Start
The words this lesson uses. Tap a card to see what it means, then come back to them whenever a question uses one.
Part One
Questions about the story you just read. Pick your answer straight off, or press Find it in the story if you would rather hunt for the sentence first.
Part Two
The word cards are at the top of this page. Look back at them as often as you need, then answer.