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Grade Level: seventh grade
Subject: Science
Learner Outcomes:
Student Task: Students brainstormed how to go about follwoing the directions for this assignment. Each group stated that they needed to know more about growing bacteria in a lab situation . They also came up with the idea of finding this information on the Internet.
Teacher Role: The teacher outlines all activities and sets up the proceedures for students to follow during lab and the write up following the completion of the project. The teacher breaks this class into groups of 3 to 4.
Grouping: Students helped to structure how they conducted lab and decided what areas to culture.
Hook: none
Student-Directed Learning: They would then go around the school to different locations that they thought were public enough for students to be picking up this bacterial infection. Examples were first the boys and girls restrooms, water fountains, cafeteria, public telephones, computer keyboards, etc.The rest of the class session was used and collected samples which were then place into the incubator. Of course each plate had to be labeled by group, date, and location. The next class session (24 hours) the students had growth on their agar plates. They then counted the number of colonies on the plates. They tried to look at the bacteria under a microscope but of course as they learned the bacteria are too small to see with a regular microscopes. They formed a data chart of #bacteria verses sample site locations. From this there were to determine which locations in the school were possible locations for bacterial outbreaks. They came up with some very interesting conclusions. One of the cleanest places where the public restrooms. They concluded that this was because these rooms are clean periodically with antibiotic cleaners. The locations that had the most bacterial growth was the public telephones, and the public counter in the office. (for fun they tested the teacher's coffee cup and found that it grew more bacteria than any other place in the school) this information was given to the principle as requested.
Use of Technology: The internet was used for preliminary research and help in interpreting results.
Assessment: Students were responsible for writing up the lab report which was graded by the teacher.
Created for the Fermilab
LInC program sponsored by Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory Education Office
and Friends of Fermilab, and
funded by United States Department of Energy,
Illinois State Board of Education,
North Central Regional Technology in Education
Consortium which is operated by North Central
Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL), and the National
Science Foundation.
Author(s): Lisa Parker from Montilieu Avenue Elementary School (lisa7oo7@aol.com),
Steve Abondolo from Northwest Middle School(abondolo@nr.infi.net),
and Pat Abondolo(pabondolo@hotmail.com)
from St. Pius X School
Greensboro, North Carolina
Created: February 15, 2001 - Updated: April 18, 2001
URL: /lincon/w01/projects/yourfoldername/pre.html