Texas Biomedical Research Institute is pioneering and sharing scientific breakthroughs to protect you, your families and our global community from the threat of infectious diseases. The Texas Biomed education program supports this mission through free, downloadable curricular units which engage students in critical thinking, model making, and hands-on lab experiences connected to current science issues. Curricular units consist of multiple lessons and each lesson contains activities. Each unit is aligned with education standards (TEKS and NGSS) and provide instructional flexibility. Units and lessons can be implemented in their entirety or activities can be used as stand-alone explorations to support existing curriculum. Texas Biomed curricular units are funded through the National Institutes of Health Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA).
Exploring the Respiratory System: Understanding the structure and function of the respiratory system is vital to making informed decisions to maintain health. Pulmo Park provides a comprehensive overview of the pulmonary system, from integration of body systems to investigations about how structure influences function. Students will observe, gather and analyze data while exploring the impact respiratory diseases and environmental factors impact the respiratory system and overall health.
Mapping Pulmo Park provides foundational information about lung structure and function, starting with the critical thinking activity (Think About It), followed by construction of a respiratory model (Reverse Lung Dissection). The lesson culminates with a Poster Presentation to showcase student understanding of structure and function of the respiratory and the impact of environmental issues, genetic factors or life choices on the respiratory system.
Within this lesson, students will engage in laboratory explorations, discovering the impact environment has on the pulmonary system. The students engage in labs which simulate various lung functions, gather data, and apply critical thinking skills to answer guiding questions associated with each activity and lab. These experiential labs can be conducted as stand-alone events or divided into a rotation format. The background piece is important for students to understand the significance of each lab as they construct connections between the lab activities and the function of the respiratory system.
On a global scale, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (aka: TB) persists as the ninth leading cause of death from an infectious pathogen. Every day, 4,400 people are infected with TB. In this lesson, Good News! TB Killer on the Loose!, students will evaluate data obtained from an article written by TB researchers at Texas Biomedical Research Institute. The lesson is based on a published scientific research article about TB. Such articles can be challenging to read and understand. To make the research easier to understand, middle school and high school teachers read the article, talked with scientists, and created a transformed article. The transformed article is shorter, easier to read, and more accessible. Good News! TB Killer on the Loose! explores how TB spreads from person to person and investigates how the body’s immune system responds to this bacterial invader!
In these activities students will create products and/or explain the impact of TB on the body and explore the body’s immune responses to the bacterium. Students will showcase their acquired knowledge through completion of items from a Choice Board (Activity A: Infect Me…If You Can!), demonstrate their data analysis skills by interpreting graphic representations of data from TB research (Activity B: Getting Graphic with TB), and finally, students will write an abstract or summary of what they have learned about TB. From the written abstract, students will create a visual abstract, using pictures and diagrams to convey what they have learned (Activity C: Visual Abstract).
