Science 8 – We are doing a short unit on Body Systems. For this unit I have come up with 3 Essential Questions (called “Key Questions” for the students). The key questions are:
- Why does an apple look different when it goes in your body than when it comes out?
- How are our body systems organized to ensure good health?
- How do the circulatory and respiratory systems work together?
The unit plan (student version) can be downloaded from here: Body Systems Unit Plan
Students are showing good progress in creating answers to the first question. However, when I ask the students to reflect on what they’ve learned and how it pertains to question 2, they get stumped. Like, really stumped. With a lot of prompting I started to coax answers from the students. “Well, what happens if your small intestine is shortened?” They finally decided that this would decrease the amount of nutrients that are absorbed.
While working through some new material on the circulatory system, I asked the students to come up to the side wall and add a sticky note to the key questions whenever they discovered a new idea that seemed to fit. I think this activity is worthwhile, but we didn’t get very far before it was the end of the class.
BC Physics 180 