Spotlight On Learning - Understanding Diseases

Spotlight on Learning:                  

How does the presence of disease disrupt the body’s natural homeostatic mechanisms?

Presented by:  Mr. Joel McCall

Course: Anatomy & Physiology 12

In this inquiry project students had the opportunity to apply and extend their understanding and knowledge of cellular processes, organ systems, and homeostasis; two of the three ‘big ideas’ of the course.  

Provided with guidelines for their research, students select a disease to investigate; specifically, a disease that affects cellular processes, organ systems, and homeostasis.  Throughout their research students generate questions, predictions, and answers about the disease. They will analyze and evaluate published scientific works to support their answers, and they will make connections and applications to their learning in the course. By utilizing their prior and current understanding of human systems, students will discover and apply specifically how disease interferes and hinders the body’s natural homeostatic mechanisms. 

TEACHER REFLECTION:  This project was successful at getting students to connect, engage, and deepen their learning with the’ big ideas’ or the course. Throughout the course, we learn about homeostasis, cellular processes, and all the body’s major organs and systems. We identify the importance of these life sustaining processes, and we investigate specifically how our body’s systems carry them out. The project then helps students identify and correlate what happens when these life sustaining processes are interfered with by disease. They can identify and explain where, how, and why the body is affected.

STUDENT REFLECTION: “I had heard of many of these diseases before, but now I could actually see why they make us sick. We could use our understanding of the body’s systems and processes; we could see just exactly why and where things go wrong.”

Read the full News from the Nest for April 9-12