During the Who We Are, unit of inquiry, students learned about the functions of the body and became increasingly aware of how we can be responsible for our body. In order for the students to have a deeper understanding of the unit we had a few transdisciplinary classes. We partnered with Ms. April in the Math department and the students tracked their resting and active heart rate. They were shown a video on how to check the pulse, they tracked and compared their resting and active heart rate (after a brief exercise) on a bar graph they created. They completed this activity by creating a poster with a heart illustrating what actions people can do to positively and negatively affect their heart. Next, we partnered with Mr. Diego in STEAM and made body books that complemented the 3D body systems they were creating from accessible objects in his classroom and the cut out paper models in G4 POI class. These interactions supported the students’ deeper understanding of the various body systems being linked and the knowledge gained in one discipline can be used in another classroom.
