Worksheets and lesson ideas to challenge students aged 11 to 16 to think hard about the seven life processes (GCSE and Key Stage 3)
Summary: what makes something living? MRS GREN (or MRS NERG) is an attempt to try and define the characteristics unique to living organisms: movement, respiration, sensitivity, growth, reproduction, excretion and nutrition. Whether these seven characteristics represent the ‘truth’ is less important than the discussions students have exemplifying each characteristic using a range of organisms e.g do bacteria reproduce, do plants excrete, how do fungi obtain their nutrition?
Key concept: living organisms share a number of features that are not shared with dead organisms or objects that have never lived.
Where to start?
This entertaining video of Robin Williams trying to find out whether his shoe is living or non-living could be used as a starting point to consider what living means. Remember, many students will consider milk living and plants non-living. Really probe students’ understanding to find out what they think living means. Are fires, rivers and milk alive?
Living, non-living and dead
Key Stage 3 worksheet on living and non-living things. Students read a story and identify things that are living, things that are dead and things that never lived. This activity then leads to thinking about what makes something living and gives time to address some misconceptions e.g. milk is living. (PDF)
Plants and MRS GREN: using the seven life processes
GCSE and Key Stage 3 worksheet looking at plants and the seven life processes. Students consider whether plants perform the seven life processes. Working in groups, students explore and remedy various misconceptions about plant biology through the context of MRS GREN. (PDF)
If life exists on other planets, what features would you expect these extraterrestrial organisms to share with organisms from Earth? Does life have to be cellular?