Year 8 are starting photosynthesis, and the teacher opens with how scientists first found out that plants change the air. A slide deck tells the story in pictures: Joseph Priestley's 1771 experiment, in which a candle burning in a sealed jar went out and a sprig of mint left in that air for several days 'restored' it so a candle would burn again, then his mouse that survived in air a plant had restored, and Jan Ingenhousz's 1779 finding that plants restore air when they are in light and that it is the green parts that do it. Before each result appears, the teacher asks the class to predict what happened, and students write their prediction and then the result in their books. The lesson ends with students writing the word equation, carbon dioxide + water → glucose + oxygen, with light and chlorophyll above the arrow, and labelling which parts of it each experiment gave evidence for.
Tools: PowerPoint Nine ideas for your own version in Generate
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.