Graphic Organizers

The three words me and my partner decided to use is metabolic diseases, HIV, and steroids. We chose these words because they captured the content of our articles and they are fairly challenging to learn about. To understand these words, students need to know more than a brief one sentence definition; students need to delve deeper into these subjects for a true understanding. For example, if we focused on the word HIV, students would have to have to understand what a disease is, have a background knowledge of what a virus is and how it's transmitted, and understand how a virus would affect a body.

Graphic organizers are a great technique to help students understand a vocabulary word (McLaughlin, 2015). When choosing the right graphic organizer for our word, metabolic diseases, we used a process of elimination. First, we eliminated the semantic feature analysis chart because it didn't seem like the right fit. Next, we looked at the remaining ones and saw that they were very similar to one another. However, we decided that the semantic question map and the concept definition map would be the most helpful for 'metabolic diseases.' Both of these options would allow students to organize their ideas of what the word was and dig deeper into the subject (McLaughlin, 2015).

I used the semantic question map and Rebecca used the concept definition map for this assignment. The semantic question map is used as a front loading activity before students read a text (McLaughlin, 2015). This graphic organizer involves three to four questions stemming off of the chosen vocabulary word (McLaughlin, 2015). The questions can either be designed by the teacher or students (McLaughlin, 2015). I decided to create the questions for my students so I can guide what they focus on. The four questions I chose was "What is metabolism and how does it work?," "What are some metabolic diseases?," "How does one get a metabolic disease and how does it affect their body?," and "Is there a cure?"

When I went through each question and researched some answers, I learned a lot about metabolic diseases. Previously, I thought that there were only a few metabolic diseases and that they were inherited and untreatable. After reading informative websites such as WebMD and MedlinePlus, I learned that there are numerous metabolic disorders and that they can affect different parts of the body. Not all metabolic disorders are inherited, someone can get develop a metabolic disorder if one of their organs start failing, like diabetes (Medline Plus, 2017). Most of the inherited disorders are caused by a missing enzyme (WebMD, n.d.). Metabolic diseases can be treated by a change in diet, replacing missing enzymes, or received chemicals that counteract a toxin that is created (WebMD, n.d.)

I think the semantic question map (McLaughlin, 2015) was very effective for this particular activity. After completing the map myself, I would definitely use this organizer in a classroom to help students familiarize themselves with a topic. If I use this activity in a classroom, I plan to draw the graphic organizer on the board and have students complete the web in either groups or individually. Students will then come together as a class and discuss the research they found.

References

Inherited Metabolic Disorders. WebMD. Retrieved from http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/inherited-metabolic-disorder-types-and-treatments#1-2

Metabolic Disorders. (2017, February 7). Medline Plus. Retrieved from https://medlineplus.gov/metabolicdisorders.html#cat_42

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Steroid Side-Effects

Steroid Side-Effects

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170413095037.htm

This week my partner and I decided to choose a biology topic again. Rebecca sent me an article to the link about side-effects that happen after short-term use of steroids. She found it on ScienceDaily, which is a website similar to the ones recommended by Text Savvy (Guilford, 2017). I thought the topic of the article was interesting and accessible to a high school student, so we decided to use it.

https://www.healthtap.com/

As I began to read the article (Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan, 2017), I found it personable because prednisone was mentioned, which is a medication I have taken several times in the past for allergic reactions to poison ivy. Sure enough, as I kept reading and I saw that allergies was listed as one of the main reasons people get prescribed steroids. As I finished the article, however, I was disappointed by the lack of data and supporting research; some of the things the author stated did not necessarily correlate with taking steroids. For example, the article states that people most likely to use steroids are people that are older white woman. Since it’s already known that older people are more likely to have weaker bones and experience fractures, the side-effects that are supposedly due to steroid-use could actually be because of patient demographics.

http://nursingcrib.com/

With such a questionable article, Rebecca and I decided to tie the lesson with the standards 3.6.2, which requires students to investigate an issue and form an opinion on it (MSDE, 2012). Using this standard, we would have our students investigate the reliability of this source by weighing the evidence presented. This lesson idea would also tie into the reading standard RST.11-12.8 which requires a student to analyze evidence from a text and determine whether or not it supports the author's claim (MSDE, 2012).

The text is an article written by Michigan Medicine of University of Michigan, which may cause bias because they may want to support their research (MMUM, 2017). The writing is straightforward and scientific; there is no use of figurative or idiomatic language. The genre is scientific research. The purpose of the text is to inform the public that they should be cautious about taking short-term use steroids and advising doctors to refrain from prescribing them or to prescribe them in the lowest dose possible. I believe it's written for the general public because the concepts and vocabulary are not very complex; other than the use of medicinal words such as corticosteroids, prednisone, and sepsis, the vocabulary were fairly simple to understand.

There was only one level of understanding for this text: the understanding that short-term use of steroids has dangerous side-effects. To understand this article, students should have a background knowledge of what steroid types of medicines are, why they are used, and that steroids act as a hormone. Some key areas in the text I found was one that highlighted that older white woman that have multiple health conditions are the most likely to use steroids. This could be used as unsupportive evidence for the issue. Another key concept is the statistics of people getting into hospitals with or without recent steroid-use; this could be used as supporting or non consequential evidence, depending on how the reader interprets it. The final key concept is the idea that steroid medications mimic hormones and can induce changes in patients.

The two strategies we used to decipher the text was narrative pyramid and discussion web. The narrative pyramid helps readers get the main points out of a text (McLaughlin, 2015). On each layer, there is a topic that they should write about and a limit of how many words they can use. On the top, I would ask students to write the topic and put the word limit for 1 (so they could write "steroids"). In the next row, the topic would be two words describing the main idea (ex. dangerous side-effects). Then the rows would go down in that fashion. The second reading strategy, the discussion web, allows students to compare two sides of an issue and decide which one they agree with (McLaughlin, 2015). For this prompt, I would ask "Does short-term use of steroids lead to serious side-effects?" The students will then organize the evidence in the 'no' and 'yes' areas. After weighing both sides, students will come to a conclusion and explain their reasoning.

After using both of these reading strategies, I found the discussion web to be more applicable to this particular article. This article was fairly easy to understand, so it was redundant to pull out main ideas with a narrative pyramid. Using the discussion web, on the other hand, allowed me analyze the validity of the author’s claims. This type of critical thinking activity would tie more closely with the standards that Rebecca and I are focusing on for this particular assignment.

References

Guilford, J., Bustamante, A., Mackura, K., Hirsch, S., Lyon, E., & Estrada, K. (2017). Text Savvy. The Science Teacher, 84 (1), 49-56. Retrieved from https://blackboard.stevenson.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1349981-dt-content-rid-7100950_1/courses/17S8W2_ED_620_OL1/ED%20620_Science%20Journal.pdf

Maryland State Department of Education. (2012). Maryland state STEM standards of practice. Retrieved from http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/instruction/clg/biology/goal3.html

Maryland State Department of Education. (2012). Reading Standards for Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects - Grades 9-12. Retrieved from https://blackboard.stevenson.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1349975-dt-content-rid-5225317_1/courses/15S8W2_ED_620_OL1/CCSC_Science_gr9-12r.pdf

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan. (2017, April 13). Common drugs, uncommon risks? Higher rate of serious problems after short-term steroid use: Broken bones, dangerous clots and sepsis all higher -- though still rare -- in those who were prescribed oral prednisone or other corticosteroids for 30 days or less. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 21, 2017 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170413095037.htm

HIV Resistance?

HIV Resistance?
 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170410154718.htm

When finding an article this week, I first looked at the websites recommended by Text Savvy (Guilford et al., 2017): Scientific American, Science Mag, and NationalGeographic. None of the articles stood out to me, so I moved onto the website Science Daily. Within minutes of looking on this website, this article about HIV resistance caught me eye. Since HIV is renowned for being a death sentence, HIV resistance would be a huge step in the field of medicine. Rebecca found the article equally as capturing, so we decided to use it for this weeks blog post.

If this treatment works, it could potentially prevent HIV from
developing into AIDS. Retrieved from https://aidsinfo.nih.gov/

This article was written in a straightforward, scientific way. The author did not use abstraction or creative writing techniques such as irony, humor, or metaphors. The article was written by the Scripps Research Institute and therefore may be subject to bias; the researchers may want to promote their idea by describing how the idea would work and leaving out potential complications. The article is not written in chronological order: first the treatment is described and then the experiment involving a virus is explained.

Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/

This author expected readers to have some understanding of biology and physiology. Students should know what a virus is, how it multiplies, and what an antibody is. The text is written like a summary; there are no subheadings or charts, etc. Students should understand that current treatment of HIV involves daily oral medication of numerous pills (shown in the picture on the left).  

When first reading this article, I was captured by the idea that a long-term treatment for HIV was being developed. Rather than taking oral medication of antibodies everyday, HIV patients would have a permanent group of cells that had and reproduced the antibodies. However, when I continued reading through the explanation of the treatment, I began to be skeptical about how successful it would be. The author explains that certain cells would be injected with an antibody that would bind onto the part of the cell that HIV uses to reproduce (Scripps Research Institute, 2017). The treated cells would survive and multiply while the untreated cells would die off from the HIV infection. Essentially, the body’s cells would experience “survival of the fittest” (SRI, 2017). They then tested their theory with a group of treated cells and untreated cells in a petri dish that they then infected with the rhinovirus (the virus of a cold) (SRI, 2017). The treated cells stayed alive and reproduced while the untreated cells all died. This made me skeptical because humans need all of their cells and organs to survive; if there are untreated areas of the body (liver, heart, etc.), a human can’t afford to just lose that chunk of cells.

HIV in the blood. Retrieved from
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/

I decided to tie my skepticism into a lesson plan for the students. Maryland standard 3.6.1 states, “The student will analyze the consequences and/or trade-offs between technological changes and their effect on the individual, society, and the environment.” (MSDE, 2012). I would fulfill this standard by requiring my students to think critically about the consequences of using this treatment on an infected individual. I will use this article to address two of the literacy standards as well. Since the article is fairly complex to understand, helping students comprehend it would fulfill the standard RST.11-12.2 which requires a student to understand a “text’s explanation or depiction of a complex process.” (MSDE, 2012). Additionally, the standard RST.11-12.8 would be addressed because it requires a student to determine if the evidence in a text is base enough to solve the scientific problem (MSDE, 2012).

The Request Self-Questioning strategy would be an appropriate comprehension strategy to use for this text’s complexity (McLaughlin, 2015). With this strategy, students read a few paragraphs of the text silently and generate discussion questions. The class then comes together and discusses the text: students answer questions generated by the teacher and the students ask questions about things they don’t understand. The students then read a few more paragraphs silently and repeat this process. I would use this strategy because it would allow the students to bounce ideas off of one another and express what they have trouble understanding. Also, it would give me an opportunity to help students understand the text step by step through visual explanations on the board and by simplifying concepts.

Example discussion questions that I will ask the class:

1. What is the significance of finding a long-term treatment for HIV?
2. Describe the process of how this treatment works. (*This question would allow me to see if students comprehend the reading. If students are lost, I will describe the process and map it out on the board).
3. Do you think this treatment would be effective?

References

Guilford, J., Bustamante, A., Mackura, K., Hirsch, S., Lyon, E., & Estrada, K. (2017). Text Savvy. The Science Teacher, 84 (1), 49-56. Retrieved from https://blackboard.stevenson.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1349981-dt-content-rid-7100950_1/courses/17S8W2_ED_620_OL1/ED%20620_Science%20Journal.pdf

Maryland State Department of Education. (2012). Maryland state STEM standards of practice. Retrieved from http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/instruction/clg/biology/goal3.html

Maryland State Department of Education. (2012). Reading Standards for Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects - Grades 9-12. Retrieved from https://blackboard.stevenson.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1349975-dt-content-rid-5225317_1/courses/15S8W2_ED_620_OL1/CCSC_Science_gr9-12r.pdf

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Boston, MA: Pearson. 

Scripps Research Institute. (2017, April 10). New approach makes cells resistant to HIV. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 10, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170410154718.htm

Three-Parent Child?

Three-Parent Child?

Link: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/genetic-details-of-controversial-3-parent-baby-revealed/

The article my partner and I chose for this assignment is about a genetically engineered three-parent baby. I found this article by following the process that Text Savvy (Guilford et al., 2017) described about finding a text: look at various magazines and online resources. Since I had never heard of Scientific American before, I decided to start there. I scanned a few articles but this particular article really stood out to me. After checking to make sure it fit the standards, Rebecca and I decided that this was definitely the article we wanted to use. This article fits the literary standard RST.9-10.4/RST.11-12.4, “Determine the meaning of symbols, key terms, and other domain-specific words and phrases as they are used in a specific scientific or technical context relevant to grades [9-10 and 11-12 respectively] texts and topics,” and the biology standard 3.3, “The student will analyze how traits are inherited and passed on from one generation to another.” (MSDE, 2012).

https://www.pinterest.com/

When I read the text for the first time, I was really intrigued that there was a baby created with the DNA of three parents (Reardon, 2017). After all these years of watching sci-fi movies such as Gattaca (Niccol, 1997) about how humans’ DNA was redesigned, this seemingly impossible scientific feat is actually happening! With my background in biology, I understood all of the language and procedures described and I thought it wouldn’t be too far-fetched for high school students to also understand it to with the right reading strategy.

Reardon (2017) wrote this article in a straight-forward, informative way for the genre of scientific writing. She speaks very bluntly and does not use literary techniques such as simile, humor, or irony. There are two subheadings in the text: ‘Genetic Legacy’ and ‘Advise and Consent.’ First, the author describes the process of creating the egg and why the egg was created. Then, in the ‘Genetic Legacy’ subheading, she highlights certain complications that could have occurred and discusses the possibility of follow-up research on the baby. Finally, the author discusses the lack of consent that the baby gave and future possibilities of expanding on this research in the subheading 'Advise and Consent.' 

The information that’s most important in this text is the description of how and why the altered egg was created. Before reading this text, students should have an understanding of DNA, reproduction, and the functions of mitochondria. When reading this article, students should think critically about the morality and safety precautions behind this scientific procedure.

With the right engagement strategy, students will comprehend this text. The engagement strategy my partner and I decided to use is the PreReading Plan (McLaughlin, 2015). With this strategy, we will go over key concepts and words with students before reading the text for deeper understanding. I believe this strategy will work because technically I went over the key concepts and words over my years as a Biology major and I understood the article with no problem. If we help students acquire a foundation of knowledge on this topic, I believe they will understand the meaning of this text as well. To carry out the PreReading Plan (McLaughlin, 2015), we can go over key concepts and vocabulary with students before delving into the reading. We can also assign this reading right after a lesson about genetics so students can use the things they learned from the lesson to comprehend the article.

References

Guilford, J., Bustamante, A., Mackura, K., Hirsch, S., Lyon, E., & Estrada, K. (2017). Text Savvy. The Science Teacher, 84 (1), 49-56. Retrieved from https://blackboard.stevenson.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1349981-dt-content-rid-7100950_1/courses/17S8W2_ED_620_OL1/ED%20620_Science%20Journal.pdf

Maryland State Department of Education. (2012). Maryland state STEM standards of practice. Retrieved from http://mdk12.msde.maryland.gov/instruction/clg/biology/goal3.html

Maryland State Department of Education. (2012). Reading Standards for Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects - Grades 9-12. Retrieved from https://blackboard.stevenson.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1349975-dt-content-rid-5225317_1/courses/15S8W2_ED_620_OL1/CCSC_Science_gr9-12r.pdf

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Niccol, A. (Director). (1997). Gattaca. [Motion Picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures Corporation.  

Reardon, S. (2017, April 3). Genetic details of controversial "3-parent baby" revealed. Scientific American. Retrieved April 5, 2017 from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/genetic-details-of-controversial-3-parent-baby-revealed/