At the beginning of the year, we started a unit on Experimental Design.  Students had to “Save Fred” a gummy worm from drowning by only using paper clips.  Students had to write down their procedure and then decide if they had done the procedure in the best way possible. They compared with peers and discussed the needed changes. 

We next learned about a disease called Pellagra.  We learned about how Dr. Goldberger created an experiment to test for the disease.  We discussed the implications of testing on humans and the ethics of his experiment.  As we continued our unit, the teacher created an experiment for students to try on their own that mimicked having a “headache” by drinking a certain kind of lemonade.  What the students didn’t know was that there was a placebo involved.  Results and discussions that followed were rich and varied.  It was decided that we would perform the same experiment on the rest of the school.  We got different and varied results that elicited even more rich discussion.  This has been a great unit that the students have really enjoyed participating in.