Shorecrest School

Seventh Graders Fight Diseases [photos]

Source/Author: Amy Brill, Seventh Grade English Teacher
May 04, 2018
Middle School News


This year the seventh grade team took a risk by planning a true Project Based Learning (PBL) experience for students surrounding the theme of disease prevention and elimination. In the end, teachers were inspired by student creativity, tenacity, knowledge, and empathy.

Project Based Learning motivates students to gain knowledge beyond traditional classroom lecture/memorization methods and has lasting impacts. Projects give students the chance to apply the skills they learn in school to relevant, real-world situations. PBL also teaches students how to think critically, solve problems, work in teams, and make presentations.

This project's essential question was: How do we learn from the diseases of our past to solve those of today and tomorrow? Throughout the year, students engaged in this topic in English, history, math, science, health, technology, music and world language classes. They read about and researched the historic yellow fever of 1793 in fiction and non-fiction texts in English class and explored how diseases affected early Floridians through a class field experience to St. Augustine back in October. Students learned about the history of disease and its impact in American Experience I and world language classes, how viruses and bacteria develop in science, how to measure the spread of diseases in math, and how germs are spread in health. As brain breaks, pandemic games were introduced to explore how quickly diseases spread.

Students began researching a disease they were interested in exploring in February, contacted members of the community to foster collaboration and service learning, and then created various projects during a week of project learning after spring break. Student outreach ranged from within Shorecrest to as far away as Africa. This included medical science students and engineering students in the Upper School, eighth grade geometry students, Lower School classrooms and teachers, media specialists, nurses from St. Anthony’s and other local hospitals, professors from University of Washington, University of South Florida and others, founders of organizations such as the Jordan Smelski Foundation, City of St. Petersburg Waste Management and others. The St. Pete Free Clinic, local health department, and the Center for Disease Control were resources for students as well.

Kay Lawrence, a nurse from Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, spoke to the grade about preventing the spread of germs. Carol Summerville, a Bardmoor Emergency Center nurse and volunteer for the Stop the Bleed campaign, gave tourniquet training to two students and a group of Middle School faculty.

The unit culminated in a Disease Project Showcase on Friday, April 27. Here projects were presented for families and peers. The variety of topics included combinations of essential oils to fight common ailments, a spray to use on raw chicken to avoid contracting E. coli, tourniquet techniques to stop wounds from bleeding, a lemon-based drink to ward off colds, proper hand washing techniques to stave off germs and much more.
 
One of the most impressive projects was a geometric planetarium built by Gabi H. and Ainsley B. With the help of the eighth grade geometry students, Mrs. Indinge, Ms. Parrott, Theatre Manager Brad Miller and others, the girls created a 16-foot wide and 10-foot tall planetarium made out of cardboard. It took them months to cut and paint panels, and several hours to construct and erect the massive structure that visitors could sit inside of to view a film. The subject of their film was a brain-eating amoeba that is found in warm, stagnant waters. The founder of a local organization, the Jordan Smelski Foundation, will speak with seventh graders at Shorecrest about the disease and prevention on May 8. (More info below.)

The year of work has resulted in the type of learning that the seventh grade students will not soon forget. Students and teachers hope that this will expand each year and become an awareness event for the City of St. Petersburg - not just the Shorecrest community.

Save the Date:
Steve Smelski, founder of the Jordan Smelski Foundation, and father to Jordan Smelski, who died of naegleria floweri, will be on campus to speak to students about this disease. His son Jordan died when water containing this brain-eating amoeba went up his nose. He will teach the warning signs and preventative measures to take to avoid the disease.



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