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Human Illnesses and Disorders Final Project

For my final project, I decided to implement a unit titled Human illnesses and disorders to galvanize interest in and teach about body system units in 3 ESO Biology. For example at the end of each physiology lesson there would be a few pages in the curriculum about the illnesses/disorders related to each system and I took these to create a 4-7 week long complete unit to which I could work with the students of 3 ESO. (Since I only saw them once a week this time frame worked well for me but it could definitely be sped up if needed.) We began with the first month of me creating 4 powerpoints that included illnesses of the Respiratory, Circulatory, and Digestive System as well as of Human Nutrition. I created all these powerpoints with the intention to get the students engaged and interacting through various media. For example, I used TedEd videos to explain certain difficult diseases in a fun way, shocking pictures from Google Images to create a sort of “wow” factor, as well as a game I created called “Doctor” where I gave my students patient dialogues and descriptions and asked them to diagnose the potential disease. We culminated the unit with a “Body System Project” so that the students could review everything we have learned about the systems as well as get a deeper understanding of the anatomical structures. 

We begin with the four powerpoints I have attached below. As you can see each one has a slightly different theme in order to change things up with the students.

 

Nutrition – I included a mini short story to read about the origins of certain diseases, and also opened the class up to a discussion of eating disorders; a topic I highly stress should be handled delicately and appropriately as I know it can be triggering for some. 

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Digestive – With this unit I focused heavily on TedEd because a lot of digestive illnesses had TedEd videos associated with them so we spent time dissecting 5 videos while learning about the different diseases. Also, this unit was inherently interesting because a lot of people suffer from these common illnesses so we spent a lot of time asking questions and swapping experiences. We also had a round of the Doctor Game!

 

Respiratory – I find with teenagers sometimes you have to grab their attention. So I filled this powerpoint entirely with Gifs and gross pictures of the diseases to keep them staring at my slides and attentive, although lots of “Que asco!”s could be heard across the room (and some laughs over the gifs which is a plus). The Doctor game was popular so we brought it back again here!

 

Circulatory – This time my attention-grabber combined trivia and riddles about the heart which we played with for at the start of class (about 10 mins) before delving into the diseases outlined in the book. And then, of course, we ended with our class favorite – Doctor!

Each lesson is designed to take up the full hour. For the most part I (or whoever is teaching) just takes over for the full hour. But it worked out well because with all the teachers I worked with my powerpoints coincided with what they were working on with the students. During the week the teacher teaches them the system and its function, and then when I had them I built on the foundation they had set prior so in this way we complement each other.

  

Body System Project:

This project is designed more for my tactile learners. My goal for the project is that through all the multi-media I have used I hope to be able to reach all types of learners – audio, visual, tactile etc. I split them into groups of 4 and gave them a giant piece of butcher paper (probably around 2 feet wide and 4 feet long) and assigned them one of the systems we have learned: digestive, circulatory, or respiratory. They had 3 sessions to draw the anatomy for their assigned system and label the organs/their functions and the last session was used to have them present their work and explain the system in a mini oral presentation within their group.

Evaluation: I wasn’t as concerned with evaluation for this project. For me, it was more class participation and to make something like science (which at times can be hard) go down a little easier with fun games, activities, and creative projects. For incentive, I told the hardest working groups that they could choose the music that I would play from the class loudspeakers. Also I find it’s easier to remember the names and functions of systems if you’re forced to draw it out so I also hoped it was good test preparation for them. Plus the doctor game at the end was a good way to check comprehension and retention at the end of each lesson, as well as the oral presentation to make sure that they actually internalized the anatomy. 

Works Cited

Powerpoint Information:

Jose Zavala – Eating Disorders https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Eating-Disorders-PowerPoint-265780

 

Heart trivia

https://www.fi.edu/heart/human-heart-trivia

 

3 ESO Biology Book 1 – Biology Humans and Health 1 Oxford Education

 

TedEd Videos:

 

Google Images:

https://images.google.com/

**To find all the gross pictures I googled the disease name!

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