Ankeney and Coy Middle Schools were excited this year to offer students a new class: a Medical Detectives course taught by Allison Bisignani in conjunction with the Greene County Career Center.
Medical Detectives is a new optional encore semester class for 7th and 8th-grade students. Students spend one quarter exploring human body systems and the second quarter following the Medical Detectives PLTW (Project Lead the Way) curriculum.
Students complete labs and activities about the 11 human body systems during the first quarter. Labs/activities include:
- Creating chyme (digestive system).
- Dissecting an owl pellet (skeletal system).
- Drawing the blood flow through the heart (circulatory system).
- Using sunscreen to protect UV beads (integumentary system).
- Calculating lung capacity with a balloon (respiratory system).
- Dissecting an earthworm (reproductive system).
- Playing immune system chess (immune system).
- Testing urine samples (urinary system).
- Hormone/receptor game (endocrine system).
- Dissecting a chicken wing (muscular system).
- Several labs deal with our senses (nervous system).
The second quarter focuses on the three units in the Medical Detectives PLTW curriculum. The first unit, Disease Detectives, has students discover how healthcare professionals act as medical detectives to identify, treat, and prevent illness in their patients. In this unit, students learn how to take vital signs, including blood pressure, and create and execute a lab to test the effectiveness of antibiotics on bacteria. The second unit, Mysteries of the Human Body, focuses on the nervous system. Students create stop-animation neuron models and dissect a sheep brain. The third unit, Outbreak!, concentrates on analyzing large amounts of data to determine a neurotoxin's source. Students must work as a team to perform lab analyses of patient samples, identify the culprit, determine the spread, and warn the community about how to stay safe.
Current sixth- and seventh-grade students can sign up for this new class this coming year.