Testing the Limits

High School Biology / 9th and 10th Grade

This first unit in the High School Biology course serves as a primer to the key PBL practices that students will engage in throughout the course. Students investigate the driving question: How does the human body stay in balance under extreme conditions? They focus on elite athletes and other people who push their bodies to the limit, in order to create an interactive quiz to teach a target audience about how the human body uses feedback loops to keep us in balance and, at a molecular level, how we use the food we eat to stay healthy and strong. In Module 1, students design and carry out a lab investigation to illuminate how the human body maintains homeostasis, even when pushed to the limit. In Module 2, students dive more deeply into the nutritional needs of the body and how what we eat impacts both the health of our bodies as well as the environment. In Module 3, students use what they have learned to create their interactive quiz that challenges friends and family to consider what it takes to be an extreme athlete.

Unit length: 4 Weeks (20 hours)