Rationale
I currently teach third grade in a school in the Pittsburgh School District. When one talks about the inner city I can honestly say my school is the most "inner" of all schools in the district. Although there is now a High School in Downtown Pittsburgh I work at a school that is in the first community that is bordering the downtown area. Pittsburgh is located where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet, also known as the Point. The first community that can be reached without crossing any rivers is the Hill District. It is one of the oldest communities in Pittsburgh and has been through its trials and tribulations. The Hill District was the community where many of the freed slaves and immigrants took residency.
Many of the students come from state subsidized homes, many of which are in need of repairs. The children live with extended families and friends. The instructional program in my school is designed around the District's comprehensive curriculum. The fundamentals of reading, language arts, mathematics, science and social studies are stressed, and expectations are high for student learning and behavior. There were 171 students in the building (K- 5) this past school year, 170 African American and 1 multi-racial child. I was the only third grade teacher in the building and had an average of 23 children in my class. We had semi-inclusion in which 3 learning support and 2 emotional support children would be in my classroom at any given point throughout the day.
This unit is designed for all elementary school students and is designed so that the activities will be appropriate for students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Because I have core-curriculum demands in reading and math I will propose to my principal that I add this unit to my science or social studies class during National Public Health Week which is scheduled for April 7 th - 13 th, 2010. Currently, the third grade Social Studies curriculum that I teach is "Pittsburgh Neighborhoods". The book we use was written in the early 1980's. I supplement the curriculum with new and updated information including a unit about Pittsburgh's families. In this unit we learn about how the family has changed over time and how the changes have affected our lives. An addition to this will now include family size and immunity. I teach the Foss science curriculum which is a hands-on curriculum. The experiment I plan to do with this unit will fit right into the teaching strategies of the prescribed curriculum. As I present the unit I need to make a conscious effort not to embed my ideas and philosophies into the students, but make sure that they come away from the unit knowing how they get sick and how to keep themselves healthy using their own findings as proof. The students need to make an informed decision about how to stay healthy by doing their own investigations and experiments. They will need to get an understanding that there are many possible reasons that they get sick and that sometimes being overly sanitized can cause adverse conditions.
During the flu season we will learn about the Scientific Method and ask ourselves the question: Who gets the most ill in my house? Even though the children have not begun the unit the flu season is the best time to collect the data. This lesson will be based solely on the Scientific Method and data collection could take several months. We will create a study in which the students document the type, severity, and length of the illnesses each household member has over a given time period. I would like the students to see which member of the family is more susceptible to different viruses and infections. When the National Public Health Week arrives I will be able to pull out their data and use it, thus amazing the children as to how well prepared I had to be. We will begin the unit with a discussion on why the children think they get sick and what they think the sanitizer does for them. Using this discussion I will gain insight into what the children's misconceptions. We will then have a brief discussion on their immune system and good and bad germs. We will then explore several reasons why people get sick. I will have them discuss the common ways that people get sick such as personal contact and airborne germs.
Using the research I have on the Hygiene Hypothesis we will learn the less common factors as to the why and how we get sick. Although the Hygiene Hypothesis researchers did not directly include flu and colds in their study I want to use the Hypothesis' methods to support our research on how and why we get sick. Other researchers took the Hypothesis one step further and developed the Old Friend's Hypothesis which I will also use for background information. Our research will use similar ideas and concepts to gain an understanding of other influences in passing germs, bacteria and viruses.
We will discuss and investigate why in large families the youngest sibling is less susceptible to asthma and infection. As a group we will organize the data and interpret the information in hopes to discover that children in school or daycare tend to get sicker than children that stay at home. The children should also notice that the older brothers and sisters and adults don't get as sick as often as they do. We will discuss that even though they might be getting sicker than their younger sister/brother they are in actuality helping them by strengthening their immunity to the bacteria or virus. We will then discuss ways to protect ourselves against getting sick. A question will be asked whether the children think that it is better to wash their hands, sanitize them or do both. Rather than telling them what I think, we will do an experiment for them to form their own conclusion. The experiment will involve an understanding of the proper technique of using soap and sanitizer, by using glitter as our medium. Glitter has the awesome ability to stay on the skin. Sanitizer will just spread it around the hand and it will take a long time to wash it off. The activity below will explain it more. The students will also study the effects of too much hand sanitizers. They will develop an understanding of why they still get sick with proper hygiene. As a cross-curricula activity the children will be given the poem that was provided at the beginning of this paper and we will form groups to discuss the poem and create a rap using the poem. By the end of the unit the children will have a better understanding of why they get sick, why it is good to have some germs hang around and the proper technique for keeping their hands clean.
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