Nancy M. Esposito
Sample Lessons—Likenesses, Differences and Uniqueness
Goal To help students understand ways in which people are alike and different.
Objectives
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1. Students will recognize and name ways in which they are like others in their classroom.
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2. Students will recognize and name ways in which they are different from others in their classroom.
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3. Students will acknowledge ways in which they are unique.
Procedures (These will cover several lessons.)
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1. Introduce the concept of likenesses and differences. Ask students to name things they can think of which are similar to each other, and tell why. Ask them to do the same thing for differences. (They need not begin with people, they may pick any items they wish to compare.) Next encourage students to talk about ways in which they think that people in general are alike or different.
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2. Encourage children to begin thinking about ways in which they are alike or different from other children in the classroom. For example, use an overhead projector (for shadow) to trace each child’s silhouette onto paper, and have the children cut them out and mount on a background sheet. Print the child’s name vertically on his or her silhouette and ask the child to choose words beginning with these letters which he feels describe himself and print these on the silhouette.
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____
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An activity which could be combined with this is to have children trace their hands on paper, cut them out, use an ink pad to print their fingerprints on them, and mount these on the bottom corners of the silhouettes. (Shoeprints or footprints can also be traced and mounted as if “walking” along a wall. These might be labeled, or left plain for children to try to guess which are their own.)
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3. Choose a large bulletin board and put up a heading “ * You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby . . . * ” Ask students to bring in baby pictures without showing their classmates and mount these in windows cut in paper musical notes. Do not identify individuals, but post a list of students whose pictures are displayed and hold a contest to see who can correctly identify the most pictures. After the baby pictures have been up for a few days, take pictures of the students in class and place these around the edge of the board. Discuss ways that people changed as they grew up, and ways in which they still look the same.
*(figure available in print form)
*(figure available in print form)
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4. Measure students’ heights and list and graph them. If this activity is done early in the year, save the graphs to be redone and compared at the end of the year. (If you expect to do this activity in the spring, it’s nice to measure heights at the beginning of the year for comparison.)
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5. Have students create “recipes” for themselves, such as “Take a dash of mischief, add a sparkling smile and a happy heart, . . . ” etc. ( Encourage students to look at positive traits, as some special education students see themselves very negatively.) If you find that students are reluctant to name their own traits, you may want to choose friends to write about each other.
Sample Lesson Plans—Living and Non-Living
Goal To help students develop an understanding of the differences between living and non-living objects.
Objectives
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1. Students will recognize the characteristics which qualify a thing as living.
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2. Students will differentiate between living and non-living things.
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3. Students will be able to sort objects into living or non-living categories.
Procedures
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1. Brainstorming and categorizing: Print the words “living” and “non-living” on a blackboard. Ask students to discuss what they think these terms mean. List their comments under the appropriate term. Encourage the students to name things which they feel are examples of each term. As suggestions are given, encourage the students to think about definitions they may have given so far and see whether they still seem appropriate. For example, a student may suggest that living things can walk and may give people as an example. Write his suggestions on the board for students to think about. The next student may suggest that living things grow, and may suggest a plant as an example. Encourage them to consider whether people grow, and whether plants can walk. At the end of the lesson, summarize what students have come up with.
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2. Hand out a list of the 6 characteristics of living things and discuss them with the class. Ask them to compare the list with the ideas they generated in the previous discussion. Talk about each of the qualities and give as many examples as possible, i.e. Growth as an end product of the utilization of energy: babies to adults, kittens to cats, seeds to plants, etc. Response to environment can be explored through the eye’s reaction to light (close them tightly for a minute and then open them in a classroom where all the lights are on).
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3. Using the given characteristics, ask students to give examples of each category: living and non-living. Give them names of objects and ask them to name the category. Have them sort given pictures into piles for each category. Ask students to use magazines to make a large classroom collage with 1/2 of the paper reserved for each category.
Sample Lessons—Sickle Cell Anemia, An Autosomal Recessive Disease
Goal To increase students’ knowledge of hereditary diseases
Objectives
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1. Students will have a basic understanding of how some diseases can be hereditary.
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2. Students will further their understanding of the terms
dominant
and
recessive
.
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3. Students will be exposed to facts about a disease, sickle cell anemia, which is not uncommon in our school setting.
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4. Students will be less fearful and more understanding of peers or adults whom they know have sickle cell anemia.
Procedures
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1. Reintroduce the concept of hereditary diseases which will already have been briefly covered before this lesson. Remind students of the meanings of the terms dominant and recessive as covered in the section on Mendel and his findings.
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2. Ask students whether they have ever heard of sickle cell anemia. Allow them to share any information they have learned, encouraging them to share information they may have about people they know who have the disease, although I would stress to the class that they probably should not give names of the people involved unless it is common knowledge that the person is affected.( The idea of confidentiality could be introduced now.) Encourage students to voice their feelings about the disease: Are they afraid that they might catch it from a person who has it? Can they? Are they uncomfortable being around people with the disease? Do they know what happens to you if you have this disease?
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3. Hand out the information sheet in this unit about sickle cell anemia. Read it together as a group and discuss thoroughly. Allow students to ask questions and answer them as thoroughly as possible.
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4. Arrange for a local medical professional to come into your classroom to speak with children about sickle cell anemia and other hereditary diseases.
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5. Discuss with children the feelings and/or concerns they shared before learning about the disease. Do they still feel the same way about being with a person with sickle-cell now that they know that person cannot infect them? Encourage students to think about how education about sickle cell changed their mind about people afflicted with it, and ask them to consider and talk about whether the same would be true for their own situation if other people understood better what special education is.
Facts About sickle Cell Trait and Anemia
What is sickle Cell Anemia?
Sickle Cell Anemia is a genetic blood disease. Normally a drop of blood looked at through a microscope will show lots of round, red bodies called
red cells
. However, in some people the red blood cells may appear to have a sickle shape instead of being round and so we call them
sickle cells
, and the disease which causes them is called
Sickle Cell Anemia
.
Normal Cells:
(figure available in print form)
Sickle cells:
(figure available in print form)
All red blood cells contain hemoglobin, the substance that gives the red color to blood and that carries iron and transports oxygen from the lungs to make it available to tissues of the body for metabolism. However, in sickle red cells the molecular structure of the hemoglobin is slightly different from that of normal red cells. When these cells release their oxygen, the red cell’s shape may change into a sickle.
Although the hemoglobin in sickle cells can carry just as much oxygen as a normal cell, there are two important differences between the two. For one thing, round blood cells can flow easily through even very small blood vessels because they are soft and can change their shape if needed, like a tiny balloon. Sickle cells, on the other hand, are hard and cannot change shape, and this means that they sometimes get stuck and jammed in small blood vessels causing the blood flow to be stopped. (Think of the sickle cells as twigs and branches that beavers might use to block a small creek—pretty soon little or no water can flow through.) You can see the problems this would cause to the parts of the body which cannot receive the flow of blood with the oxygen they need to survive.
The second difference between sickle cells and normal red cells is that the sickle cells do not last very long. A normal red cell lives for about 120 days, but sickle red cells only live about 30 days. As you can tell, the body of a person with sickle red cells would need to keep replacing the red cells about four times as fast as it produces normal red cells. Unfortunately, the body cannot produce the new red cells at a fast enough rate, and so it ends up with fewer red cells and less hemoglobin than a healthy body. This condition is named
anemia
.
What Does It Feel Like To Have Sickle Cell Anemia?
First of all, it is important to know that not all of the people who have sickle cell hemoglobin in their red blood cells have Sickle Cell Anemia. Sickle Cell Anemia is an autosomal recessive hereditary disease, which means that you can be a carrier but not have the disease. In that case, you would be said to have
sickle Cell Trait.
That would mean that you would probably lead a healthy life, but that if you grew up and decided to get married and have children,it would be possible for your children to have Sickle Cell Trait or Sickle Cell Anemia.
People who do have Sickle Cell Anemia have pain that might occur in any part of the body at any time when the sickle cells block the flow of blood. The pain might go away very quickly, or it might last as long as a week or two. If the pain is mild, aspirin might make it feel better, but it could also be so severe that the person might have to go to the hospital. The sickle cell anemia also makes the person get very tired easily. However, in between the attacks of pain, children with Sickle Cell Anemia can play and go to school, as long as they do not play sports that are too rough.
Is There a Cure for Sickle Cell Anemia?
Unfortunately, at this time we do not know a cure for Sickle Cell Anemia. You are born with it, and you have it all of your life. Treatment from a doctor usually involves giving medicine for the pain and giving blood transfusions when the number of red cells and the quantity of hemoglobin in the blood is too low. Sickle Cell Anemia shortens some people’s lives, but people with this disease can lead satisfying lives.
Are Some People More Likely to Have Sickle Cell Anemia Than Others?
“Sickle Cell Anemia is a major health problem in Africa, South America, Latin America, the West Indies and the United States. In the United States, about 1 out of every 10 black Americans has Sickle Cell Trait and about 1 out of 400 has Sickle Cell Anemia. But Sickle Cell Anemia is not confined to black people. It is also found in some racial groups which live around the Mediterranean Sea. . . . The reason African and other peoples who live in that area have sickling appears to be related to malaria. Although having Sickle Cell Anemia has always been a disadvantage, having Sickle Cell Trait is beneficial in areas where malaria is a problem. Individuals with Sickle Cell Trait are resistant to malaria; they do not get it as frequently as normal individuals, but if they do get malaria they do not die as frequently.”
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