create a lesson plan with activity for 9th grade biology class teaching the organization of life and what makes something alive

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Levels of Biological Organization

To start off our unit, living organisms share 8 essential traits: cellular , , , reproduction, growth and development, response to stimuli, heredity/DNA, and adaptation through evolution.

Continue to compare living vs. non-living things

Now let's put those 8 characteristics to work by comparing a living organism, like a horse, to a complex non-living object, like a car.

At first glance, a car seems surprisingly alive! It takes in fuel and consumes oxygen to release energy (a lot like metabolism), responds to pressing the gas pedal, and exhausts waste.

However, a car fails the check for life because it completely lacks cellular organization, cannot maintain internal homeostasis, doesn't pass down heredity through DNA, and cannot reproduce on its own.

To be considered scientifically alive, an entity must fulfill all 8 criteria—not just a few of them.

How would a computer compare to a living thing?

Computers are another great example! Just like a car, a supercomputer or laptop can mimic a few living traits: it uses electrical energy (a form of energy processing), responds to input like a keyboard tap, and software updates can even adapt its behavior over time.

However, computers fall short of being alive because they lack ], cannot maintain internal , do not pass down biological traits through DNA, and cannot reproduce on their own.

Because a computer fails those core criteria, it doesn't cross the threshold to be scientifically classified as living.

Why is DNA necessary for something to be considered alive?

Think of as the ultimate biological instruction manual.

It contains the chemical code necessary for building proteins, driving cellular functions, and passing inherited traits down to offspring.

While computers store massive amounts of digital information using software code, they rely on silicon, wires, and human programming—completely lacking organic genetic material like DNA.

Now that we have checked off all 8 characteristics of life, do you feel confident about what makes an organism scientifically alive before we move on to how life is organized?