RETURN TO SEARCH RESULTS
OpenSciEd Unit 6.6: Cells & Systems Student Edition
Author(s): NATIONAL CENTER FOR
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2022
Pages: 132
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OpenSciEd Middle School science program addresses all middle school NGSS standards. This comprehensive science curriculum empowers students to question, design, investigate, and solve the world around them.
- Phenomenon Based - Centered around exploring phenomena or solving problems
- Driven by Student Questions - Storyline based on students’ questions and ideas
- Grounded in Evidence - Incremental building and revision of ideas based on evidence
- Collaborative - class and teacher figure out ideas together
- Equitable - Builds a classroom culture that values ideas and learning of all
The OpenSciEd model uses a storyline approach, introducing phenomena that anchors storylines developing disciplinary core ideas, concepts, and science/engineering practices. Students are encouraged to dive deep into key points and solve problems through five activities. Students kick off a unit of study, investigate questions, piece together the puzzle in investigations, and problematize the next set of questions to investigate.
Unit 6.6: How do living things heal?
This unit launches with students hearing about an injury that happened to a middle school student that caused him to need stitches, pins, and a cast. They analyze doctor reports and develop an initial model for what is going on in our body when it heals. Students investigate what the different parts of our body are made of, from the macro scale to the micro scale. They figure out parts of our body are made of cells and that these cells work together for our body to function.
Once students have figured out what their bodies are made of and how the parts of their body work together to be able to move, they wonder how the parts of our body heal. They start by watching a timelapse of a knee scrape and notice that over time the part that was scraped is filled in with new skin cells. Students investigate what happens when cells make more cells, what cells need to make more cells, and how cells get what they need to make more cells. Students return to the healing timeline they made at the start of the unit and apply what they have figured out about the interactions between the different systems in the body to explain the various events of healing that took place for the injury at the start of the unit. Finally, they apply their model for healing to explain growth at growth plates in children's bodies as they become adults.
Lesson 1: What happened in the student’s foot so they could walk again?
Lesson 2: What do our bones, skin, and muscles do for us?
Lesson 3: How can medical images and diagrams help us figure out more about the structures in our body?
Lesson 4: Why is there blood in all of these places in the body?
Lesson 5: What do nerves do, and why are they in different parts of the body?
Lesson 6: What will we see if we look at skin, bone, and muscle with the microscope, too?
Lesson 7: Are all things made of cells?
Lesson 8: What happened as the skin on top of the foot healed?
Lesson 9: What is happening at the site of an injury to fill the gap?
Lesson 10: What do cells need to grow and make more of themselves?
Lesson 11: How do cells get what they need to grow?
Lesson 12: How do the structures and systems in the body work together to heal the injury?
Lesson 13: How is the process of growing similar to healing?
Lesson 14: How can shifting our perceptions of ability and disability allow us to be more thoughtful about how we make our environments more accessible?
NATIONAL CENTER FOR
OpenSciEd® was launched to improve the supply of and address the demand for high-quality, open-source, full course science instructional materials. The goals of OpenSciEd are to ensure any science teacher, anywhere, can access and download freely available, high quality, locally adaptable materials. Though the goal of providing full course materials is still a couple of years away, OpenSciEd is releasing six-week units of instruction as they are completed and externally evaluated as quality by Achieve’s Science Peer Review Panel. OpenSciEd classroom materials are an open education resource and therefore free to download, copy, use, and/or modify. You can download the instructional materials free of charge at Access Materials page on the OpenSciEd website. In an effort to lower barriers for all educators to use OpenSciEd, Kendall Hunt and OpenSciEd have partnered to sell high quality printed books, professional learning and lab kits.