Spring 2004

Northwestern-designed ‘I, Bio’ program has middle school students taking a new look at lunch

By Katharine Duke

Typically, most middle school students don’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether the foods they choose for lunch are healthy or if they are taking in more energy than they need.

Yet, thanks to a middle school science curriculum designed by Northwestern Research Assistant Professor David E. Kanter, more than 300 seventh graders in Evanston are currently researching the question, “How well do my school lunch choices meet my body’s energy needs?”

The eight-week human biology curriculum called “I, Bio” uses science to teach students how to calculate the energy in the food they eat and how to measure the energy they use up doing daily activities such as walking, climbing steps and running.

Instead of just memorizing rules or counting calories, the students are using science to build a first-hand knowledge of “energy in” and “energy out,” said Kanter, a member of the Learning Sciences faculty at Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy.

“It makes the students really think about how their bodies work on a cellular level,” Kanter continued.

Kanter, who has a PhD in biomedical engineering, started working with middle school teachers several years ago to develop a meaningful, project-based human biology curriculum that would appeal to middle school students.

Last year, he and Chicago Public School Teacher Emily Kemp presented the curriculum to 18 Evanston and Chicago Public School teachers in a 10-week graduate course called Learning and Teaching Human Biology. The idea was that Kanter and Kemp would teach the science content and inquiry science teaching methods to the teachers, who, in turn, would simultaneously present the curriculum to their students.

Megan McDermott, a seventh grade science teacher at Nichols Middle School, was one of five School District 65 teachers who began teaching the curriculum last year. She had teamed up with Kanter and Kemp a year or so before that to help develop the curriculum.

“It was an appealing curriculum for me,” she said. “I’m very into human biology, and I thought there was a strong need for a hands-on, problem-based approach.”

Her students also found the curriculum appealing. “For many of them, it was their favorite unit of the year,” she said.

At the beginning of the unit, there were a lot of misconceptions about healthy eating, McDermott said. “The students didn’t know what a calorie was, and they had no idea that there was a relationship between how much work you do versus how much energy you’re taking in. It was enlightening for a lot of students.”

She and Drew DePaul, also a seventh grade science teacher at Nichols, taught the unit to about 120 seventh graders last year. Although McDermott is currently on maternity leave, DePaul and McDermott’s substitute teacher are presenting the material again this year.

“By the end of the unit, my students could tell you what a calorie was and how to measure it,” McDermott said. “And they could basically describe to you cellular respiration even though they didn’t know it was that. It worked out very well.”

Kathy Roberson and Katrina Moore, seventh grade science teachers at Haven Middle School, taught the “I, Bio” curriculum last year to about 230 seventh graders and are using it again this year. Roberson said that her students particularly enjoyed the hands-on activities. For example, one day her class used oxygen sensors to see how much oxygen was in the air. Then, they used the oxygen sensors to see how much oxygen they used at rest and how much they used after exercise.

“The students were able to use different kinds of probes and equipment they might not have used before,” Roberson said. “It made it more exciting, and I think there was a deeper understanding of what we were talking about because of it.”

Kanter provided each of the Evanston and Chicago Public School teachers with technology kits.

McDermott said she liked taking the course and having the support while teaching the curriculum.

“It was really neat to have a professional group of colleagues doing the same curriculum at the same time,” she said. “We stumbled upon the same problems, and we were able to discuss them. It was ideal as far as a teaching situation goes.”

Although the curriculum wasn’t specifically designed to get the students to change their eating habits, both McDermott and Roberson said that they thought their students gained a greater awareness of how the food they ate affected their energy levels.

“I think some of the students are now making more informed decisions,” Roberson said. “They have a better understanding of what their body needs.”