Optimal group size: 24 students
Co-operative forms of pair or group work are recommended. A textbook, the Internet or professional literature can serve as a source of information; digital technologies are an added value.
List of activities
|
Activity |
Discipline |
Goals in curriculum |
|
Biology |
Blood donor |
|
Biology Technology |
|
|
Biology Physics Chemistry Technology |
Transfusion Using polymers |
|
Biology Physics Technology |
Composition of blood Gravitation Centrifugal force |
|
Biology |
|
|
Biology |
|
|
Biology Chemistry |
Blood types |
|
Biology |
Heredity of blood types |
|
Biology Chemistry |
Functions of blood |
|
10. Blood as a guard |
Biology |
Functions of blood |
|
11. Blood preservation |
Biology Chemistry Physics |
Using polymers Crystal |
|
12. Is it possible to produce artificial blood? |
Biology Chemistry Technology |
Activity 1 should introduce the topic and create a need to search for further information (Engage).
Activity 2 first relies on the independent work of pupils, later the groups are supposed to work together and to process the acquired information into one collective output. This activity is preparatory to activities 3–5 (study visit of a transfusion station, components of blood and a scientific conference) (Explore).
Activity 3 Excursion to a transfusion center aims to motivate students to think how aids for taking and storing of blood work and what properties the materials used to make these aids must have (Explore, Extend).
Activity 4 gives students an opportunity to make up a model for simulating separation of individual blood constituents in the way they saw at the transfusion center. Besides, they have to design a model for counting the number of particles in a given volume (Explore, Extend, Explain).
Activities 5 and 6 are based on the fact that students have already acquired enough information about blood (in activities 1–3) and are capable to present this information to others. The aim of these activities is synthesis of knowledge and its interpretation. These activities help students to understand relations and to change knowledge to cognition (Engage, Explain).
Activity 7 is based on a situational interactive animated game and simulation of genuine determination of blood types. Since handling of a real human blood it is not allowed at schools the alternatives to this activity are proposed. In any case, students have an opportunity to experience what happens when two incompatible blood types are mixed and comprehend why this happens. Next, students develop their own model for simulation of blood type determination (Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend, Evaluate).
Activity 8 focuses on the heredity of blood types. Using matches pupils make models to ilustrate how blood types are inherited. They can find out what blood type children could inherit from their parents using a calculator on the Internet and, further, apply the principle on provided example to confirm/exclude fatherhood (Engage, Explore, Explain, Evaluate).
Activities 9 and 10 specify and consolidate the information about physiological functions of blood pupils have already encountered when searching for answers to their questions, at the transfusion center and at the scientific conference. They explain that the red blood cells transport respiratory gases to and from cells and they learn to recognise types of white blood cells on blood smear photo like "experts" (Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend, Evaluate).
Activities 11 and 12 provide an opportunity for reflexion on the topic and looking into the future by means of contemplating possibilities of technologies (Engage, Explore, Extend, Evaluate).