Lesson 1:

Topic: Cell theory

Aims:

1-To learn about the history of cell theory.

2- To learn how to express an opinion.

3-To develop vocabulary related to cell theory.

Text 1:

1-History of cell theory:

When you hear the word “scientist,” what do you thi nk of? A person in a white coat
working in a laboratory? It’s true that many scientists do important work this way.
But scientific theories don’t usually come from a single person working in a lab. They often
come from several different scientists building on each other’s discoveries.

Case in point: Cell Theory. This theory is one of the foundations of biology. Cell theory has
three parts:

1. All organisms (living things) are made up of one or more cells.

2. The cell is the basic unit of structure and organization in organis ms.
3. All cells come from preexisting cells.
It took a few steps and a few scientists to come up with this theory.

Part One: The Microscope

The story of cell theory started in the Netherlands in the 1600s. There, a spectacle-maker
named Zacharais Janssen is said to have invented a compound microscope. A compound
microscope uses two lenses. One lens is close to the object being viewed. This is called the
objective lens. The other lens is close to the viewer. This is called the eyepiece.
Microscopes became extremely popula r among scientists.
Part Two: The Discovery of Bacteria

Another Dutch scientist, Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, decided to make his own microscope.
He began looking at all kinds of matter with his invention. He even looked at the scrapings
off his own teeth. That’s how he discovered bacteria!

Part Three: The Discovery of Cells

Van Leeuwenhoek wrote letters to a scientist friend in England named Robert Hooke.
Hooke also studied objects with a microscope. He studied a piece of cork and noticed it
was divided up into little chambers. These reminded him of monastery cells. So, he named
his discovery cells.

Parts Four & Five: More discoveries about cells

Next came the work of two German scientists. Matthias Schleidan was a botanist. He used
microscopes to study plants. Eventually, he realized that all the plants he looked at were
made of cells.

Meanwhile, Theodor Schwann studied slides of animal cells. He concluded that all animals
were also made of cells!

Part Six: Preexisting Cells

Eventually, Schneidan and Schwann joined forces and started to develop the cell theory.
But they disagreed on the third point: that all cells come from preexisting cells. It took a
third scientist, Rudolf Virchow, to prove that cells did indeed come from other cells. But
the research he used to prove this actually came from a German Jewish scientist
named Robert Remak!

What can we learn from the history of cell theory?

So, what does this story tell us? Two things. First, scientific theories often involve building
off of other people’s discoveries. Second, you never know where a scientific theory might
come from. It could be sitting in the guck on your teeth!
Questions:

 1- The journey into the microscopic world is similar to our current explorations of
outer space. Describe how our explorations of these two worlds are similar and
how they are different.
 2-What are the three parts of the cell theory? Which part tends to be the hardest
to support with evidence?

From: Let’s Talk Science.

2-How to express an opinion:

To express opinion you use these phrases:

Informal phrases:

I think…..

I believe…..

I feel…….

In my opinion….

I would say…….

Formal phrases:

From my point of view…….

From my perspective……..

In my view…….

It seems to me that……

You express your agreement or disagreement for someone else’s opinion by using these
phrases:

To express agreement

I agree…..

So do I …….

Me too…..
To express disagreement

I disagree….

I do not agree…..

I am sorry I do not agree…..

Examples:
1-In my opinion, football is more popular than basketball

I agree with you football is more popular

2- I think French is a hard language to learn

I do not agree, I think it is not that difficult to learn