As a primary-level teacher, I am responsible for creating a classroom that operates as a community, with everyone’s voice included in the day-to-day environment and provides opportunities for students to learn through science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics. Key components of our school theme include problem solving and design development to improve human health. This unit will present the perspective that engineering design ideas and products created in purposeful way, with the diverse needs of people across the globe, can help solve problems in human health.
Teaching in a self-contained classroom at Edgewood Magnet School in New Haven, I find the neighborhood/magnet setting a rewarding environment, with students coming to school each day from a variety of home circumstances and with differences in academic levels. As a result of these variables, the children have differing levels of background knowledge and life experiences. The classroom is a mixture of varied ethnicities, economic strata and social and emotional strengths and weaknesses. The use of inquiry allows students at all levels to learn in an inherently differentiated environment, learning new concepts and experiencing laboratory and demonstrations as they move through this curriculum unit on understanding how our skeleton helps us.
Throughout the school year, the Kindergarten curriculum touches on the topic of health and nutrition. Our school staff is currently mandated to develop rich curriculum that supports our new S.T.E.A.M. focus, with particular emphasis on units that provide a variety of opportunities for the students to learn about engineering design. The idea that engineered solutions are necessary but can be of help only if they are affordable, accessible, and appropriate seems a primary aspect of understanding the goal of any design. This unit is in direct alignment with my responsibility to design curriculum and to correlate with the approach we use to help our students learn through science instruction, inquiry and investigation.
Young students seem fascinated by how their bodies work and this will be a great introduction to understanding human biology. The picture book, The Skeleton Inside You by Philip Balestrino, serves as a foundation for this unit. This text explains to young students how your skeleton helps you, focusing on the activities and actions of children – how you can leap, somersault, and touch your toes— and without it, you would be as floppy as a beanbag. The text and illustrations help children learn that there are over 200 bones living and growing inside you that make up your skeleton along with ligaments and joints that hold your bones together, and cartilage in your bendable parts like your ears and your nose. But what if one or more of the parts isn’t working and needs help? What can we do to fix those parts? These are some beginning questions the students will to start thinking about at the launch of the unit.
