I'm excited to start the second half of our year together! We're shifting gears and exploring a new topic:Human Body Systems. Our first segment will be on the digestive system. It should be very informative!
My big focus this unit will be on helping you design your own investigations. This means we will be revisiting and practicing the assembly of the necessary parts of a good scientific investigation. But don't worry: we will be helping you along and I am confident that by the end of the unit, you will be very comfortable in creating your own investigations with your table group!
For the first day of class, we discussed a puzzling phenomenon: Me! I have had a malfunctioning digestive system for most of my life. I have, for many years, suffered from bloating, nausea, cramping, and diarrhea. It was such a problem that I planned most of my life around being close to a bathroom at all times! Since we don't normally talk about our insides during everyday conversation, I just assumed that everyone had the same troubles that I did.
To make a long story short, by random chance I discovered that I have been sick most of my life because of something related to eating wheat. If I avoid all wheat (or gluten) products, my digestive system works properly. I have lost weight, I sleep better, and I feel a whole lot healthier!
So, why is wheat such a problem for me? I went to see a doctor, but he didn't give me a solid answer. His first tests didn't give us any evidence, so he asked me to come back for more tests. The problem is, I have been so busy with school that I haven't gone back – and that was three years ago! Perhaps now that we're working together to try to explain my wheat problem, I will return to the doctor. Maybe we can get an answer from my tests by the end of the unit, and we can see how accurate our claims are.On our second day, our table groups began to assemble an initial drawing of my digestive system. We used a piece of pizza as our food to follow, since it has not only wheat but a little of everything: meat (pepperoni), dairy (cheese), vegetables (tomato sauce)... if we can explain what happens to each type of food throughout the process, maybe we can come up with an explanation for what is wrong with me. Or, we can at least say where the problem is most likely happening.
We will modify our posters as we move through the unit and gather evidence, but we won't change the original work, we'll just add to it with post-its and taped-on paper. We want to keep track of how our thinking has changed over the course of the unit!
