Outbreak Alert: Stop the Virus by Designing an Antiviral!
Help me give my students (180) the engineering design process lab materials to develop an antiviral that will stop a virus from infecting a cell. They will gain deeper understanding of contagious disease outbreaks.
My seventh grade Life Science students are creative, curious and critical thinkers! They thrive in our weekly science labs with active, engaging and challenging projects that allow them to explore living processes. They are an inspiration to me as they build their research skills and find creative solutions to help them understand the natural world.
They come to my classroom curious and excited to explore every day phenomena in their cooperative learning teams and grow both personally and academically.
My goal is to improve their science skills through inquiry-based and hands-on lessons to enhance each student’s critical thinking. My students experience a variety of teaching strategies and lab experiences to ensure their individual learning needs are met to help each one stay engaged.
It is a great privilege to teach in a growing community in Idaho within a collaborative school of caring and competent teachers and parents. Truly, these engaged and active seventh graders are an inspiration and I am very thankful to teach students that are excited and ready to learn science!
My Project
This interactive lab project will engage my 180 students in the engineering design process! How exciting it will be to facilitate student teams to become biomedical engineers to find a solution to prepare for outbreaks of highly contagious diseases! Students will work together learning about the cell and explore living processes. Then, they will apply their understanding working on a team to stop a newly discovered virus from infecting a cell.
How encouraging to see student teams eagerly working together in a lab experience that helps them have deeper understanding of viruses and cells and strengthen their science skills and critical thinking.
My students are highly motivated in lab because they are able to move about and interact with their team. They are having the most amazing conversations as they learn to be a productive and collaborative team! Building their research skills and team process is a critically important life skill for their current and future families, their careers and leadership in their communities.
Science is a process of doing and is more like a verb than a noun. My students are more engaged in the process when they are working together using their critical thinking skills to solve problems that involve something that is real to them. Often, a lab experience relates to their personal lives because a family member is struggling with a virus or disease, as well as the outbreaks that they hear about in the news. These lab materials will help my students practice solving a current real world problem and improve their communication skills in the areas of critical thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Crane and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
