Evolutionary Medicine

Activities:

Activity #1-Sit Spot

Sit Spot is an activity that focuses on a student’s observation and note taking skills but doing scientific illustrations. To perform this activity, you need the following materials:

• Flowers and plants
  • You can either use your schools landscape if there are plants and flowers around, or you may need to purchase or harvest samples to be used
• Color Pencils, Markers, Crayons
• Notebook paper

This activity should be done after going over the note taking lecture. Students will spend 30-45 minutes to sketch a chosen sample and to write notes about what they observe. Emphasize the importance of using the human senses (specifically touch, sight, and smell) to give the best description. It is important to note that the point of the exercise is not to be the best drawer, but to see how accurate and precise the student is with being detailed in both their illustration and note taking. REMIND THEM TO TAKE THEIR TIME AND DO NOT RUSH! This activity can be graded or not graded. If graded, we are assessing if the student is accurate with their scientific illustrations and if there are detailed notes.

Activity #2-Research Exercise

This will need to be in collaboration with the school librarian, or if you would like to execute on your knowledge. Research is important because students (and adults) need to learn to actually investigate to see if a claim is true or not. This should be done after the research lecture. Emphasize on the importance of primary and secondary sources and how to take proper notes. A graphic organizer of “Who? What? Where? Why? And How?” would be useful for students with their reading comprehension of articles, news stories, and YouTube videos.

The activity is focused on student interest. Encourage the students to use a personal interest (such as pop culture or cultural practice or something they have been curious about) and expand their learning on said subject. The starting question should be: “What Can We Learn About Our Interest?” To scaffold this, you may need to have a prepared slide of your personal interest to showcase. Make sure you are using good research techniques, such as acknowledging the source where you got the information, the length of your information (if you decided to write a paragraph or have a 2-3 slide presentation), and having a work cited page/slide. This activity can be graded or not graded. If graded, we are assessing the students' usage of citations and acknowledgments, if they actually got it from a primary or secondary source (not Google), and if they can communicate their research in a nice and concise presentation or paragraph essay.

Activity #3-Natural Selection Lab

This activity should be executed after students have learned about graphs, as well as the concepts of Natural Selection and Survival of the Fittest from the relevant lectures. The activity will use the Natural Selection Simulation from the University of Colorado-Boulder PhET Interactive Simulations Website. You can either create your own lab activity focused on the simulation or use the preset activity provided by PhET. In this activity, students will explore how the fur color of rabbits and their environment impact the survivability of specific traits. They will analyze how the independent variables (fur color and environment type) correlate with the dependent variable (the number of rabbits remaining after a wolf pack feeding). After completing the simulation, students will create a graph to visualize the data and defend their conclusions (using the CER framework) on the importance of fur color and environment in natural selection and survival. This lab will be graded, and we will assess whether students correctly plot the exponential graph of the rabbit population, input the data into a data table, and interpret and analyze the collected data.

Activity #4-Bacteria Lab

This activity is designed to demonstrate to students that bacteria are everywhere and provide them with a hands-on application to observe this. It aims to engage students by showing how bacteria can be easily sampled from everyday objects and grown without the use of a microscope. Although bacteria are ubiquitous, our bodies have defense mechanisms that protect us, though some bacteria can still be harmful. In this exercise, students will touch various objects with their cleaned hands or use a sterile tool to collect samples. They will then gently apply the samples to the surface of an agar plate. After closing the agar plate and wrapping it in Parafilm (or tape), they will give the plate to their instructor to incubate for at least 24 hours. This will allow bacterial growth (colony formation) to occur on the agar surface, which the students can then observe and analyze. The following materials are needed:

• Agar Plates
• A form of sterilization (hand sanitizer or loop and fire)
• An incubator or a warm dark area
• Parafilm or tape
• Sharpies
• Gloves

It is important to have some questions for them to hypothesize versus having them come up with their own questions. Example questions can be:

• “Who Has the Cleanest Phones?”
  • Zone out the Agar Plates into 4 Zones, with one zone being a control. Have students test their phone and 2 other students’ phone
• “Are Bacteria Growing in My Backpack?”
  • Zone out the Agar Plates into 4 Zones, with one zone being a control. Have students pick 3 items they use all the time in their backpack and swab to see if bacteria is growing. Which item do they believe will have the cleanest sample.
• “Where At School Is the Cleanest?”
  • Zone out the Agar Plates into 4 Zones, with one zone being a control. Make sure you let your school know that your students will be out collecting samples. Have your students think of 3 places on campus they believe are the cleanest.

Remind your students that to reduce contamination, they need to sterilize their hands or their loop tool every time, before they collect more samples. This can be graded or not graded. If graded, we are assessing if the student can read instructions, identify the independent variable, generate a hypothesis, and discuss their results.

Activity #5- “Superbug” Research Project (Unit Assessment)

This is the Unit Assessment where we will see the student’s research skills, argumentative skills, use of graphical representations or other scientific models, and critical thinking ability. Can be done in groups or individually (I will do groups for the cooperative learning teaching strategy). Have a list of “superbugs” from which they choose. They are to do the following:

1. A history of origin of their superbug. Where was the first case that observed the bacteria?
2. A common antibiotic that was used to treat the bacteria.
3. When did we start to see resistance towards the medication?
4. A possible “Last Resort” option that patients may try to use.

Rubric will be used for students to see what criteria they will be graded on.