Biodiversity Hospital

One of the areas I am focusing on for increasing student engagement is to prolematize the content I teach. When I found this assignment about biodiversity on ARKive.org I thought it would be a good way to try to do this. Working with the other grade 9 science teacher in my school, Mr. Robertson, we adapted what was already created for us to meet our needs and the needs of our students.

1. Students were placed into Medical Teams of 5 and given a "patient" (species-at-risk). For groups of more than 5 we paired students who need assistance with another student.
2. Each student had to choose a specialty from which to complete research to diagnose their patient. Students were provided with a Diagnosis Sheet of questions to help guide their research.
3. To complete the diagnosis students were placed into Specialist Teams. Each member of this team researched a different species but from the same perspective so that they could help each other.
4. Once research was complete students returned to their Medical Teams to share what they learned and create a Treatment Plan.
5. Each Medical Team then presented their Treatment Plan to the class.
6. For the final part of this activity each student had to make a decision about where patients would be allocated in the hospital. We decided that this would be the only portion of this task that would be graded. Students were given some questions to consider and a Patient Allocation Chart to complete and hand in (through our Moodle site).

Mr. Robertson and I both teach two grade 9 classes and we have had similar experiences while doing this activity. We each had one class that was engaged at the valued/challenged levels and had wonderful treatment plans and presentations, and the other class was at the compliant/interested levels and had treament plans that lacked important information. I have experienced several other challenges with the not very engaged class, so it isn't just this task that they didn't get into.

What I think was great about this activity:

• students worked in groups - they could help each other and discuss ideas with each other,
• students had to do research about a species they knew nothing or very little about,
• students had to complete an individual assignment where they had to evaluate the importance of each species and decide which one should be helped the most/least,
• it was an activity that required the skills and information we have been gaining throughout the unit so it was a nice way to end the unit,
• Mr. Robertson and I worked together to refine the task from what was on the ARKive.org website; both of us contributed some great ideas that neither of us would have thought of if we hadn't been discussing it together.

What I will improve for next time:

• provide students with more focused questions for the Treatment Plan and more structure for the presentation,
• provide students with a better view of the big picture; now that I've done this activity with a class this will be easier for me to communicate with students before we start the task.