This planning tool is a draft of a unit plan using the microworlds kit. It reframes the kit around a food poisoning scenario where students gather evidence to better understand how single celled organisms (i.e. salmonella, yeast) behave in different environmental conditions (i.e. scarce/abundant food source, cold/warm temperatures) in order to explain why a boy gets a fever after exposure to salmonella in undercooked chicken. The microworlds kit has other lessons around exploring pond water or hay infusions which could have taken us to pond context but the reason we went with a food-poisoning phenomenon is because it’s relevant to students lives – food-poisoning can happen eating at restaurants and at home. Likely some students have experienced the symptoms. Also, 5th graders also have a “Body Shop” unit and the food-poisoning ties in to concepts they learn in the body shop unit as well.
This draft is a starting place. Please feel free to make changes to the student tools within this file and to add or change activities based on the ideas your students bring up in class.