Warren Middle School 7th Graders Use Yeast to Tackle Cellular Respiration

From Warren Township Schools: If you’ve ever baked bread from scratch, you know to combine flour, water, salt and yeast to make dough. You also may be familiar with the chemistry behind how those billions of yeast cells turn the gloppy mass into a fluffy, fragrant loaf. It is with this in mind that Warren Middle School science teachers Kelly Brown, Patricia LaMorte, Daniel Ticchio, and Kathryn Speckin recently introduced yeast into a 7th grade cross-curricular lesson on cellular respiration and fermentation using a combination of science, math, social studies, and a little bit of home arts.

“We use yeast because it is a unicellular organism in the Fungi Kingdom, so the students can work with an organism that they know little about, yet are familiar with,” says 7th grade science teacher Daniel Ticchio. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) emphasize teaching cellular respiration as part of a unit on ecosystems so “we have added some lessons this year to teach students about the way organisms get energy by breaking down glucose into ATP at the cellular level,” says Ticchio.

ATP, short for adenosine triphosphate, is a molecule that stores energy in every cell. During the hands-on lab, students were tasked with making qualitative notations about what they observed as well as graphing quantifiable measures like temperature and the height of the carbon dioxide bubbles created by fermentation (or anaerobic respiration) of the yeast organism.

The students should come away with an understanding “that organisms need ATP (energy) to live and that the main purpose for animals such as humans to take in oxygen is so that we can break down our food into energy,” Ticchio says. “They all know we need oxygen to live, but now they should understand why.”

“The entire middle school science department should be commended for their ongoing work around revising the middle school science program to address the rigor of the state-adopted Next Generation Science Standards,” says Curriculum Coordinator William Kimmick. “These lessons are an example of how the teachers provide student experiences that enable them to access complex practices and content.” Ticchio says the cellular respiration lesson also enhanced student learning of photosynthesis, with teachers referring back to previous lessons on the topic. The students can “now see that plants make the glucose to be broken down for their energy” he says. “So the plants can grow and reproduce.”

Photo Courtesy of Warren Township Schools