Today we had an interesting little history lesson on women in war by Pippa White.  It was pretty fun to watch her tell stories and act out her characters, all of which were true and historical in nature.  Tomorrow we get back to science.

Today I gave a quiz over the first section of chapter 4.  I can tell that since I gave a somewhat easy quiz last week, the kids think all the quizzes are going to be easy.

Today we worked through a lab with water plants and started in on photosynthesis.  Pretty fun day today.

Today we went through our Guided Reading on the characteristics of plants in chapter 4.  We also watched a cool little video form BBC Life on the Venus Fly Trap.  I’m going to see if I can find one for the room.  After that I introduced the questions that may or may not be on the quiz Friday.  Tomorrow we’re going to be starting a couple of labs.

Today I introduced a Powerpoint on plants as we worked through the first section of chapter 4.  That is the homework for today.  We had a couple of bumps in the road behavior-wise, and I hope we have a better time with it later in the week.

Today we had a nice talk about the writing exercise and some kids did more research on the subject over the weekend.  We also talked a little about our next investigation and ideas for another experiment.  After that we started in with Plants and chapter 4.  We did a concept map in class.  No homework.

Today we had a pretty easy quiz on this last section of the text and then we observed our bacteria for the 4th day.  We also took that data and wrote our interpretation for i under a specific structure.  They are supposed to write their scientific conclusion over the weekend if they didn’t complete it in class as well as write their Dr. Wakefield paper for Monday.

Link to writing exercise here

The Case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield Writing Exercise

This writing exercise is intended to expose my students to how poor science reporting can affect millions of people.  It is intended to help my students make connections to vaccines and how scientific research affects us on a daily basis.  The connections between misconceptions and public actions are a major factor in science reporting.  Because scientific endeavors can be difficult to understand by the general public, it is my aim to expose how misrepresentation and poor science can cause panic.  This is a reprint (and slight modification for school) of a cartoon by investigative journalist Darryl Cunningham.  The original work can be found at:

http://darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com/2010/05/facts-in-case-of-dr-andrew-wakefield.html

Directions for this exercise are as follows:  Read through the cartoon below and write a 2-3 page paper explaining how you see this case and its affects in the scientific community, the public sphere and any possible positive or negative consequences.  This case began to surface in 2009 and has been lingering in the media to this day.  Throughout the paper, please address the questions below.

• Who is Dr. Andrew Wakefield?
• What were Wakefield’s claims against the MMR vaccine?
• How did the sample size (12 children) affect the result of the research?
• Why was this significant?
• How did the public percieve these results?
• Were there any ill affects after these results came out?
• Other scientific organizations did their own research on this case.  What did they find?
• How does this affect the debate?
• In your opinion, Why did Dr. Wakefield conduct his research?
• Did he act ethically?
• Who is Richard Barr and what part does he play in this case?
• Brian Deer investigated this case.  What did he conclude?
• Were there other serious implications about the research?  Explain.
• How did the media report this case?
• Is the media to blame for any of the possible negative affects of this case?  Explain why or why not.
• State your opinion on how this case will affect future research.
• How can cases like this be prevented, if at all?  Explain.

Today we got a little more data from our bacteria lab and boy, are they getting gross.  The kids are loving it, though.  I also introduced the next quiz questions, as well as a video on polio in India.  We talked a little more about epidemics around the world and I asked the students what they think the next epidemic will be.  I had some very interesting questions and I’m looking forward to helping them find out the answers to them.

Today we worked through our first observation of our growing bacteria.  Some of it looks pretty good and they will continue to grow all week.  We are getting into “Viruses, Bacteria and Your Health” in our text and it’s a short one.  We should be moving through it quickly. They have a homework assignment for section 2.3.  They are to write 15 questions through the first 3 taxonomy domains (just like the last two chapters).  We will also be researching a disease for a project later in the week.