Fifth-graders purposely spread germs in their science class last month.
Actually, they applied glow germ gel to their hands as part of an experiment during science class. The Lennox School District started Project Lead the Way Launch in its science curriculum with its fifth-grade students this year.
Fifth grade science teacher Cody Lutes said students seem to be having fun exploring how germs are spread. He and fifth grade health teacher Patrick Purdy are working together on teaching this curriculum.
“A lot of them like it because they actually get to do like a real life problem and explore something that’s actually meaningful and not just ‘what are germs,’” Lutes said. “I hear a lot of them talking about it outside of class, which is kind of cool.”
Fifth-graders Kendra Gilbert, Ava Nelson, Zander Hazuka and Benny Seelen shared what they were learning through Project Lead the Way.
Gilbert explained that they have a log where they record all of their information related to the project. She said it helps them stay organized.
Nelson said they kept all of their data from their germ experiments in the log so later they could make a poster. Each student or pair of students came up with what items they were going to evaluate that got rid of the germs the best and their own rating scale.
“For me and Kendra it was zero to five ratings. Zero was the worst and you worked your way and five was the cleanest,” Nelson said.
Nelson and Gilbert used Dawn dish soap and regular hand soap. Seelen and his partner did the school soap and the hand sanitizer. Hazuka and his partner did bar soap and the school hand sanitizer.
After that part of the project, they started working on a scenario where make-believe children were sick and the students were given a list of the “sick” students and their symptoms to try to figure out who started it.
The fifth-graders are liking this type of learning.
Login to read the rest.