Driving Question
How could nanotechnology influence future medical research of heritable diseases?
Who: 9th grade students in a Biology 1 class with an equal ratio of girls-to-boys and a mixture of higher achieving, average, and lower achieving students.
What: Five groups of students, with various make-ups of boys and girls, work collaboratively to develop new medical research avenues using nanotechnology.
Where: Biology classroom with lab and group stations designed to promote student collaboration.
When: Takes place over the course of a 4 week unit.
How: The completion of class activities will guide students to developing their research avenues.
What: Five groups of students, with various make-ups of boys and girls, work collaboratively to develop new medical research avenues using nanotechnology.
Where: Biology classroom with lab and group stations designed to promote student collaboration.
When: Takes place over the course of a 4 week unit.
How: The completion of class activities will guide students to developing their research avenues.
Group Make-up
Group 1:
1 Higher achieving 2 Average 1 Lower achieving |
Group 2:
1 Higher achieving 2 Average 1 Lower achieving |
Group 3:
1 Higher achieving 2 Average 1 Lower achieving |
Group 4:
1 Higher achieving 2 Average 1 Lower achieving |
Group 5:
1 Higher achieving 2 Average 1 Lower achieving |
Behind the Curtain - Making Thinking Visible
Detailed description of how the driving question is open-ended allowing for different investigative questions.
- Question lends itself to nature of science, science literacy, and 21st Century Skills
- Students think about the design of effective research and its implementation to treatment.
- Students realize the drawbacks, gaps in knowledge, and the scientific method while immersing in the research process.
- Students appreciate that not all research becomes application and not all experiments lead to useful results or correlations.
- Question does not define a specific disease that limits student interest
- The particular use of heritable diseases defines the focus to the genetics unit in Biology.
- Question allows for creativity/exploration
- What can these students come up with that could potentially be useful in treatment methods?
- The open-ended question allows for differentiation of students’ abilities and interests
- Students can delegate roles in their groups to best support each others passions, goals, and skills.
- Students can choose which genetic disease to study based on their own personal interest.
- Questions students could explore:
- Are students more interested in application and treatment or research and the scientific method?
- How is nanomedicine different than traditional medicine?
- How is nanotechnology currently being used in clinical research that benefits the health field?
- What is the effect of the heritable disease on the cellular level?
- How can nanotechnology improve the treating of the heritable disease?
- How will size dependent properties of nano-sized particles be used to treat heritable diseases?
Detailed description of how you will keep the students focused
- Use follow-up questions to further direct students toward goals
- What current research is there about this topic?
- What else do you need to know to understand that topic?
- What nano-concept can be applied to this topic?
- What else do you still not know?
- Use technology to engage students and direct focus to nano-medical research
- Invite guest speakers to class
- Have students utilize online resources like interactive models to play with nanotechnology content
- Take advantage of technology for the final assessment presentation
- Build a website
- Create a game/walk-through
- Make a video compilation
- Develop a portfolio to demonstrate unit process
- Use the activities from EDCI 627 (Research Goes to School) course
- Create your own experiment demonstrating the property differences of objects based off of the surface area to volume ratio
- Have lab stations with varied materials that demonstrate and compare size dependent properties of nano-materials with macro
materials
- Allow for collaboration outside the classroom
- Other teachers, administration
- Local health facilities
- Email/call/meet with professors, researchers, etc.
- Provide mini daily objectives or weekly “goals” for mastery of skills/content
For example:
- By the end of today, you should be able to describe where a nanometer is on a metric scale
- By the end of this week, you should have contacted someone out of the school for an interview
- Update a sticker chart of mastery level completion for learning objectives
- Include formative assessment for yourself, as well as your students, to understand how well they are meeting content
standards
- Have exit tickets at the end of a class with questions regarding content standards or skills
- Helps build self regulating process and meta-cognition of learning with students
- Provides teacher with insight on student's mastery level
Detailed description of how the unit is focused on nanoscience
- Learners will be able to relate the size of nano-sized objects to objects encountered in daily life (macro-scale).
- Place cells, DNA, organelles, organisms, atoms, molecules on a scale for reference.
- Pose question: "If we are attempting to interact with DNA, what size material should we be using?"
- Learners will compare surface area to volume ratios of different sized objects and explain that surface area to volume ratios play a role in the unique properties of objects at nano-scale.
- Then, have students complete the Surface Areas labs (Bet I Can Beat’cha!, Which Shape can Dissolve the Fastest, and What Effects Enzyme Reaction Rate).
- Make sure that the students understand and can state for themselves how surface area to volume ratio relates to size and more specifically the nano-scale.
- Pose question: "If you are trying to make a medicine more effective, which would have a faster dissolving time: a pill or many nano-sized particles of the same makeup? Why?"
- Learners will be able to explain why (intensive) properties can change at the nano-scale.
- Have students compare this lab's conclusion to the vegetable lab's conclusion. Why/how are they similar? Do you think scientists created this nanotechnology prior to observing this natural phenomenon? How do scientists tend to develop new technology?
- Have students complete the Sand Station lab and write down their observations and discuss and find out how this is related to the nano-scale.
- Pose question: "What ethical questions were posed between using the white sunscreen and clear sunscreen? What similar ethical issues might be posed during your own genetic research?
- Learners will be able to develop a definition of self-assembly reflecting the process and the role it plays in making nano-structures.
- These properties will reflect their understanding of electrostatic forces and the effect they have on bonds.
- Students will translate the behavior of self-assembly to the natural assembly of DNA during cell reproduction and DNA formation.
- Pose question: "How might self assembled micelles be used in your proposed nano-treatment?"
Detailed description of how the unit is grounded in real life and beyond school
- Most students have or will have a heritable disease that affects either themselves or a family member in their lifetime.
- The research that they do can be applied to the world around them by sharing their ideas with others.
- This will help provide the development of 21st Century Skills like critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity that the students will need to use in life at school and beyond.
- The problem introduces students to the realization that their education and ideas could potentially be used in future societal decisions in their lifetimes.