The “Microbe-scope” and PQP (Phenomenon, Question, Practice)
I must hear three things on NPR driving to and from school every day that get me thinking, “How can I incorporate this in my Health Care Essentials class?” So that’s how this “lesson” began last fall, with a comment during “All Things Considered” about an interesting graph that I knew I had to find and share with my students…and so I present to you, “The Microbe-scope”:
Strangely enough, I had several conversations with colleagues earlier that day about the struggles our students face when it comes to extracting meaning from graphs and data. I was motivated to develop this into a full-blown lesson, but wasn't sure what form it should (and would) take. So I thought, heck, I’ll throw it up on the screen for our Warm-Up tomorrow and see what happens.
In a nutshell, what happened is that the Warm-Up turned into a week long project completely driven by questions my students developed, researched, and shared with our class. To facilitate, I employed a strategy I find myself using quite a bit these days: PQP (Phenomenon, Question, Practice). While this strategy works well in science, I imagine it could be translated into other disciplines as well. What’s great is that it works for teachers and for students.
First, you think about a phenomenon you want to investigate (the deadliness and contagiousness of diseases, the Ebola outbreak, placebo effect, volcanic lightning, etc.), and then you develop questions that will help you understand an aspect of the phenomenon (Which disease is the most contagious?, Why is Ebola so deadly?, Is there any physiological evidence as to why patients “feel” better when given placebos?, Where has volcanic lightning been documented?, etc.). Finally, you identify which scientific practices you will need to apply to answer these questions (analyzing and interpreting data, engaging in argument from evidence, constructing explanations, planning and carrying out investigations, etc.).
For “The Microbe-scope” lesson, I introduced the graph as a phenomenon, and asked three questions of my students: (1) What does this graph mean? (2) What questions do you have about understanding how to read this graph? (3) What questions does this graph raise for you?. We practiced analyzing and interpreting data, constructing explanations, and engaging in argument from evidence to answer these questions. I should mention that my students were most surprised by the fact that Whooping Cough was more contagious than Ebola (that untreated rabies was so deadly was a close runner up). My students decided (politely demanded) that they wanted to work collaboratively in small groups to research a disease from the graph of interest to them (their phenomenon). It was delightful (and somewhat disturbing) to hear them cry out triumphantly, “We have Tuberculosis!” or “We got Ebola!”. Each group was asked to develop five questions to guide their research, and to then apply at lease three different practices as they went about finding answers and explanations to share in their presentation.
While we certainly engaged in the four C’s (Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking) I would argue that all of these worked toward building a 5th C: Community. I was incredibly pleased by their enthusiasm, ownership of their own learning, and the end results. I learned a heck of a lot, too. Most importantly, that I shouldn’t be afraid to try something new (and I don’t need a detailed and uber-organized lesson plan for it to be successful).
Here are a couple of slides from their resulting presentations:
(Thank you to John Spiegel, San Diego County Office of Education Science Coordinator, for sharing the PQP technique with me.)
