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Protein and Muscles

NSTA Playlist

 

Is Lesson Plan

Sensemaking Checklist

What Are NSTA Playlists?

Playlists are bundles of resources to support contemporary Science/STEM teaching and learning placing equity at the center of instruction. These playlists contain instructional materials and/or assessment tasks for classroom use paired with professional learning resources to support implementation.

  

athletes
Lesson Plan 1

How do people build muscles if they are not eating muscle proteins?

High school students, as scientists, encounter a puzzling phenomenon: professional athletes with muscular bodies who are vegan. Students investigate the diets of these athletes to answer this question: How do people build muscles if they are not eating muscle protein? Students figure out that much of the food we eat contains proteins. Even things we consider to be carbohydrates, like wheat and other grains, have proteins, so even if we are not eating certain kinds of proteins, we do consume other proteins.

Time: One 50-minute class period

meat
Lesson Plan 2

What exactly are proteins and how are the proteins we make different from those we eat?

High school students, as scientists, investigate proteins to answer the following question: What exactly are proteins, and how are the proteins we make different from those we eat? Students figure out that when we eat proteins, we break them into many different amino acids, and when our body makes proteins, our cells are combining many different amino acids using the information on our genes/DNA.

Time: One 50-minute class period

Muscle cells
Lesson Plan 3

How do cells know which amino acids go together to make certain proteins?

High school students, as scientists, investigate how new proteins are created using pieces of the proteins they ate to answer the following driving question: How do cells know which amino acids go together to make certain proteins? Students will figure out how genes are composed of a sequence of DNA that is then transcribed to RNA, which determines the sequence of amino acids that make up a protein.

Time: One 50-minute class period

muscles
Lesson Plan 4

What makes muscle proteins so different from other proteins in our body?

High school students, as scientists, investigate differences among proteins to answer the following driving question: What makes muscle proteins so different from other proteins in our body? Students interact with images, videos, and simulations to discover that different DNA sequences found in different genes result in different proteins that have different structures and functions. This discovery can help explain how many different proteins (including muscles) can be made from the amino acids in the foods we digest.

Time: One 50-minute class period

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