Life Cycles

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Area: Philosophy of Science, Science
Grade Level: Middle School, Primary/Elementary School
Topics: animals, biology, plants
Estimated Time Necessary: The length of this lesson can vary, depending on how many philosophical questions you want to explore with your students. This lesson can be adapted to a short 30 minute session, or longer hour-long sessions, or even multi-day sessions if the students are really engaged in the philosophical inquiries on this topic.

Lesson Plan

Objectives:
Questioning life cycles
Students will practice formulating their own thoughts about interesting philosophical questions related to plant and animal life cycles before engaging in collaborative discussions.
Understanding life cycles
Students will deepen their understanding of the cycles of life across the animal and plant kingdoms.
Notes on the documents in the Resource tab
  • Discussion Question Slips: print one sided in order to cut cleanly
  • Independent Thinking Note-Taker: print two sided to keep things orderly

Introduction 

Introduce the concept of “life cycles” to the class, highlighting that even though there are differences in the life cycles of various species, the general steps of birth, growth, reproduction, and death are involved in all living things’ life cycles. 

  • You can use this catchy animated song (though it leaves out death) or this informative video to introduce the topic. However, this philosophy lesson will be more successful if the students have already learned about life cycles prior to engaging in this. 

Independent + Collaborative Thinking 

  • Purpose: The structure of this lesson is intended to help students develop their independent thinking skills and apply these products towards a subsequent collaborative inquiry. In other words, for lots of philosophical questions, they are first encouraged to silently think and respond in writing to philosophical questions before contributing to a community of inquiry about the question. 
  • Set up: (prior to the lesson):
    1. Cut up the questions into individual strips and place them into a bowl. (see “Resources” for these slips) 
    2. Make sure every student has a copy of the 2-sided worksheet (and a pencil) (see resources) to jot their initial independent thoughts. 
  • Steps:
    1. Choose one student to come up and pick a question from the bowl for the class to think about. Write the question on the board or show it under a document camera, if you have one. 
      • Recommendation: For more advanced classes, you can have the students come up with their own philosophical questions to put in the bowl. This should only be done with classes that have previously successfully practiced developing philosophical questions to a novel topic. 
    2. Give the class 3 minutes of silent thinking and writing time. Encourage students to think about the question for 30 seconds-1 minute before picking up their pencil to write. Ideally, pencils are moving until the 3 minutes are up. 
      • Note: This might be a challenge for some students. It might be helpful to model this process for a different question yourself before getting them started on this independent thinking process. 
    3. Facilitate a community of inquiry discussion for this question, having students respond by following respectful habits of discussion. 
      • Recommendation: While all the students came up with their own independent thoughts, encourage students to consider how their own independent thoughts connect with other people’s independent thoughts. 
      • (This can be done by having students identify whose points of view they agree with, disagree with, or partially agree with when they are sharing their own thoughts.) 
      • (If the students are struggling to do this themselves, prompt them with questions like “Who said something similar to Sally?” or “Who thinks something a little different?” and having them expand on each other in this way.) 
    4. Once the discussion reaches a reasonable conclusion, repeat by having a new student pick a question from the bowl.
EXPAND TOOL TEXTCOLLAPSE TOOL TEXT

Discussion Questions

  • If a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, is it still the same animal?
  • If a baby animal is raised by a different kind of animal, does it still live the same life cycle as others of its kind?
  • If a plant grows in the wild and another grows in a garden, are their lives the same?
  • Is the life of a tree determined once the seed is planted in the ground?
  • When you grow up, are you the same “you” as when you were a baby?
  • What if an animal could choose when to grow older? Would that still be a life cycle as we know it?
  • If one life makes new life by reproduction, is there really such a thing as an ending to a life cycle?
  • How are life cycles of individual plants or animals affected by other kinds of plants or animals?
  • If a living thing cannot reproduce, how can it still contribute to future life cycles?
  • When something dies, can it still have importance to living things on Earth?
  • If some animals have very short lives and others live a long time, is one life more valuable than the other?
  • Should all living things have the same chance to grow old?
  • Is a life more important if it helps other living things survive?
  • Can one living thing’s life cycle be more important than another living thing? Why?
  • Is it better for a life cycle to be slow and steady or fast and full of changes?
  • What makes a plant’s life a good life? What makes an animal’s life a good life? How are they the same or different?
  • Do plants and animals have control over their life cycles?
  • How do you think the length of time an animal lives for affects how it perceives the world and its own life?
  • What would life be like if no one ever died?
  • Could there be a kind of life somewhere that has no life cycle at all?
  • If you could change one thing about the human life cycle, what would it be and why?
  • How does having a life cycle affect our lives, as humans?

Resources

This lesson plan was created for PLATO by: Sam Kahn, PhD Student in Philosophy at UC Santa Cruz.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

If you would like to change or adapt any of PLATO's work for public use, please feel free to contact us for permission at info@plato-philosophy.org.