View article and photos from Medical Detectives' class on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ngsd30?fref=ts&scrlybrkr
Maple Students Investigate Diseases during PLTW Medical Detectives' Class
There are some "could be" doctors in the house at Maple School! Although students in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) lab are not real doctors, they have been doing an excellent job acting like medical professionals, during their Medical Detectives’ classes, led by teacher Kristen Leverso.
This is the second year that Medical Detectives is being offered to seventh and eighth-graders taking Project Lead The Way (PLTW) courses, and it is the first year it is being held in the state-of-the art STEM Lab at the new Maple School, which features a lot of natural light and space, high ceilings, and an impressive balcony for experiments like the popular egg drop engineering project!
On December 3, the kids interviewed a group of staff members who acted as patients. They peppered them with questions while taking notes in their engineering notebooks. Then they had to research the patient’s symptoms, and run tests with help from a disease dictionary. After analyzing and interpreting the data, and reviewing the patient’s medical file, they had to provide and evaluate evidence and construct an explanation to support a diagnosis.
Maple School nurse Katie Weissler was one of the patients being interviewed because her “baby" had symptoms of the flu; while physical education teacher Jillian Rathge was diagnosed with "Lyme Disease," after her symptoms pointed solidly in the direction of that malady. Some questions posed included, “What brings you in today?” How long have you had this pain? Do you have any other symptoms? Do you have a cough, red eyes, or ear pain? Have you traveled recently?
A diagnosis and treatment plan was then discussed with Ms. Leverso. The pupils were required to completely describe all medical evidence to show that they understood the full medical case. Only then were they permitted to share the diagnosis and treatment plan with their patients.
Next week, the Medical Detectives will be studying neurological disorders, which are diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system.
