If you are looking for something topical to include in your science lessons, diabetes has been hitting the headlines recently.

This week it has been reported that diabetes cases have jumped by 60% in the last decade and that more young people are being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

For a lesson which incorporates “how science works”, try getting your class to investigate the evidence for this rise or to look at the link between obesity and diabetes. Starting points for the search could be:
http://www.diabetes.org.uk/Guide-to-diabetes/Introduction-to-diabetes/Causes_and_Risk_Factors/
http://www.diabetes.org/food-nutrition-lifestyle/lifestyle-prevention/risk-test.jsp

For an interesting practical activity divide your class into patients and doctors, provide the group with “urine” samples (also known as cold tea!), and ask them to work out who is suffering from diabetes. Make sure you remember to add glucose to one of the urine samples first!

You can extend this activity to cover kidney disease too if you add protein to one of your samples.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Science, Teaching Ideas, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.