Making the study of microbes come alive, can be difficult. You Be The Doctor allows students to apply something they know, being sick, to understanding microbes. Students uncover clues about what is making patients sick, research causes, order tests, find treatments, and bill insurance companies.
My eighth grade students attend a traditional middle school in North Carolina.
It is a title one school so it has a high percent of free and reduced lunch students. While it is a new school, there was not enough money to hire sufficient teachers so class sizes on average are 40. Making learning exciting is even more important with my eighth grade students because they all really liked their old schools, and are feeling upset and confused about moving to a new school during their last year of middle school. We drew students from four other schools throughout the district.
My Project
You Be The Doctor will be a week long inquiry. During this time they will receive ill patient charts. They will be able to interview the patients and order tests from the "lab". Students will research microbe caused diseases and apply information gleaned from the patients to help them determine the cause of the sickness. They will then use the "lab" results to confirm or reject their results. They will then research treatment plans and write their findings in a lab report. Finally they will "bill" the patients insurance companies and produce a bill for the patient and the insurance companies. Not only will the students learn about microbes in a real world scenario, they will also learn about insurance and how it truly works.
Of course this project will help students understand, microbes which are on the standard course of study, but more importantly, it will help students understand that not all illnesses can be treated with antibiotics, and that insurance doesn't cover all medical expenses.
Each of these concepts are very important for scientifically literate people to understand.
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