Monday Made It!

I'm linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for this month's Monday Made It!

I made lots of stuff this week - gearing up for Back to School {from the break, that is...} It actually feels like we've been out for much longer than 2 weeks! So I made a little slideshow that includes a few reminders for some of the things that may have been forgotten. Here's a peek! Hope you find some inspiration in it.

I got rolling on my Human Body Unit that I am *SO ECSTATIC* about teaching for the next four weeks. I can't think of a better way to start off the 2nd semester!! I am using the Code Blue Medical Simulation package as a starting point, though I am steering off the path quite a bit. {Click here to see the sample pages of this simulation, created by TeachInteract.com} I love the idea of the medical simulation, but I wanted to put personal touches on the lessons. Basically, the gist of simulation is that the class is broken up into groups of six, to form a "Medical Clinic". There are six doctors in each clinic: a cardiologist, a pulmonologist, a gastroenterologist, an infectious disease specialist, an orthopedic surgeon, and a neurologist. Once the groups are together, they create a name and a sign for their clinic, and then each doctor goes to his or her "specialty conference", where they become experts in their field. They are each required to pass a board exam and once they do, they reconvene with their group and train one another so that ultimately, every member of each clinic is fully trained in each and every specialty.  THEN they will all take a Physiology Test, which will actually cover everything. Once they all pass that test, then they can treat patients. More on that later!!

Throughout the medical conferences, I will be mostly encouraging students to be creative in coming up with ways to teach one another about their specialty. I have lots of ideas for activities, though, so if they get stuck, I will be there to guide them.They are all required to create some sort of model that will demonstrate how their specific system works. My kids are exceptionally creative, so I am really looking forward to what ideas they come up with. I'm hoping that none of my ideas have to be used!

In order to make this authentic for the students, I made medical folders for each student, complete with personalized labels. {Each student will be referred to as "Dr." for the unit's entirety...just for extra fun.} Included in each folder are the following items:

• A Welcome letter that congratulates them on being accepted to medical school
• A detailed explanation of their specialty {these I did not make..they came from the simulation package mentioned above, so I didn't include peeks of them}
• A study guide for their specific board exam
• A diagram of their human body system

Here are some peeks at the folders and their contents that I created:

I put 72 of these bad boys together {since I'm departmentalized, I have 72 kiddos} - and all I can say is Praise the Lord for my sweet husband because without his help, I'd STILL be working on getting these together. But I say TOTALLY WORTH IT because these kids will definitely remember this unit of study AND I really think that having something like this for them will get them even more excited about learning the material.

So as you can see, I've been hard at work getting ready for this incredibly fun unit. I cannot wait to start. I am super excited to see what types of models and diagrams the kids come up with. I will be posting weekly about the progress of this unit, including the models they come up with and any/all the activities that we do throughout this study.

One last Made It...I created several Pinterest boards that might be helpful to any of you out there that might be getting ready to teach this same material. Click the logo to see them:

 

Thanks for stopping by! Link up with Tara!!