Engineering of Global Health

Teaching Strategies

This unit is designed to incorporate the school’s literacy focus and create a scientific story for students to understand the many intricacies of the cell cycle. The literacy initiative requires students to read, write, speak, and listen at a proficient level in accordance with PSAT and SAT scores. Tenth grade biology students participating in this unit will be assessed on their content knowledge by a district-mandated unit assessment and their literacy skills by the PSAT. These results will then be used to measure the effectiveness of teachers. To comply with the school-wide implementation to improve literacy, the unit contains multiple reading, writing, listening, and speaking opportunities for students. The unit scaffolds from the basics of DNA structure and building to protein synthesis, mitosis, and cycle regulation in order to apply the knowledge to the entire cell cycle. Students will produce a written response based upon our class model, explaining how each of the various cell processes relate to the cell cycle as a culminating activity.

Schoology is the learning management system used by the entire school district for teacher collaboration, student learning, and professional development. All three courses I teach—biology, integrated science, and environmental science—utilize Schoology on a daily basis for students to access course resources, assignments, and assessments. This biology unit will be structured electronically with “completion rules” requiring students to move through the unit in a specific manner. This enables students to scaffold their learning with periodic checkpoints and instructor feedback throughout the unit. Students will not be free to explore all content simultaneously due to the completion rules. Too much information can create unintentional confusion. The intention of the rules is for students to be walked through the lessons in a systematic approach where one topic will build upon the next without the direct instruction from the teacher. All of the courses I teach are designed to be self-paced with strict deadlines for students to practice time management – an important 21^st century skill.

Blended learning focuses on the integration of technology to create a personalized learning experience for students. The teacher provides a set of resources, in this case resources will consist of videos, simulations, articles, and hands-on experiences, and students have a choice in the time, path, place, and pace of their learning. This means that students are able to complete lessons both in and out of the classroom utilizing resources that best fit their learning style, while moving at a pace comfortable to the individual. This type of learning experience allows students to practice various 21^st century skills: extracting pertinent content from resources, using technology as a source of information, obeying deadlines, organizing and applying found information, and self-assessment. In this unit, students study DNA structure, protein synthesis, mitosis, and cell cycle regulation by extracting information from pre-selected resources in order to complete a graphic organizer. The graphic organizer will be used as a vehicle for students to collect and organize information and the instructor to review content and identify connections.

Although students will be working primarily at their own pace, there is ample time for peer collaboration. Groups of students will conduct a laboratory experiment to extract DNA from strawberries and kiwis. Analysis questions will be answered as a group to encourage discussion. While working individually, students will be free to work around peers to promote the discussion of content. The class will participate in a protein synthesis relay race where students must work together to convert a DNA sequence into an amino acid chain.

The Next Generation Science Standards ask students to construct an explanation based upon evidence and use a model to illustrate a process. This unit requires students to explain the structure of DNA, the process of protein synthesis, and the functions of proteins. Although initially these written responses will be collected as informal assessments for the instructor to gauge student progress, this knowledge will eventually be incorporated into the culminating writing assignment. All written responses will be graded on a rubric that students have access to prior to writing highlighting expectations. The class will create a life-sized model of the cell cycle to illustrate the stages and processes a cell moves through during its time towards reproduction. Students will also use this model to explain when some cells differentiate and why regulation of the stages is necessary.