Grade Level: 3rdGrade
Type Of Project: Service Project
Context: Students will create a Public Service Announcement to inform their audience on ways to stay healthy.
Inspiration: Answer For Cancer is a project that was inspired by the 3rd-grade teacher who has been fighting cancer for the past few years. The goal of the Answer For Cancer PBL is to teach 3rd-grade students how healthy choices can help prevent us from getting sick with things like the cold and flu as well as how we can minimize our risk for getting cancer.
Voice & Choice: Students will choose their research group and create their own research questions based on the compelling question.
Real-World Connections: Students will interview the school nurse, someone fighting cancer, and a real cancer researcher. Students will work with the Food Corp teacher and PE teacher to learn healthy habits. They will present their germ scavenger hunt data and plan to the school janitor and principal.
Cold & Flu: This project focuses on teaching students the process of researching, reading informational text, informational writing and really gives them a purpose for learning. Students will learn about germs, how they spread and how we can stop the spread to keep ourselves healthy during cold and flu season. The opening event called Bug In The Classroom will teach students how easily and quickly germs spread by using glow powder and a backlight flashlight. Students will also collect data through engaging in a germ scavenger hunt around the school looking for germ hot spots using cotton swabs and Petrie dishes to grow live cultures that they will investigate with microscopes. Students will present their germ findings to the janitors, principal, and school nurse to help reduce the risk of others contracting a virus by making sure the hot spots get regularly disinfected. Students will be given a topic like Flu prevention, work with their group to come up with their own research question, conduct research based on their question, work through the writing process to create an informational piece, and create a 30 second or less Public Service Announcement to present their findings to others. They will also create flu fighter bags that will be sent homes with all of the students in the building. They will create an informational flyer to teach others how to stay safe during cold and flu season.
To finish the cold and flu unit, students will create cold and flu kits to pass out to all students in the building, students in the district, and the community. These kits could include items such as hand sanitizer, masks, disinfecting wipes, kleenex, disposable gloves, and the informational flyer they create. Students will create a plan they will use to ask businesses in town for donations to build their kits.
Cancer:
This project will then move into learning about what cells are and why we need to do everything in our power to keep our cells healthy along with how cancer affects our healthy cells. This project connects really well with the structures of life FOSS science kit. The students will work through a STEM activity called Curing Cancer. They will act as biomedical researchers and will design their own tool to help extract cancer cells (lima beans) from healthy cells (lentils). They will run trials and have the opportunity to tweak or redesign their tools. If students successfully remove all of the cancer cells without too many healthy cells they beat cancer. If not, they double their cancer cells and start another trial.
They will then be split into five different cancer research groups including Cancer & Prevention, Causes & Treatments, Support, and Healthy Living. The students will work through researching their questions about their topic using multiple sources, write an informational piece and create an informational video to teach others about their topic. As a culminating project, the students will create kid chemo kits which will include handmade pillows (with Growth Mindset quotes and student pictures), squishies, fidget toys, and whatever else the students come up with to send to the children’s cancer unit at the University Of Iowa Children’s Hospital.
Standards
Health Literacy: 21.3–5.HL.1, 21.3–5.HL.3, 21.3–5.HL.5
Science: 3-LS-4
ELA: RI.1, W.2&7, L.1,
Universal Constructs: 21.3–5.ES.1-3
Technology: 21.3-5.TL3-5