Welcome to Magic Bullets
Cancer. It's one of the words that people fear the most. It seems like everyone knows someone—a friend, a family member—who has been affected by cancer. It is the second leading cause of death in the United States. That makes cancer an important health issue. But, let's be honest, why would anyone in high school want to study it? Why is cancer the topic for this module? How will you, as a teacher, use this module?
The module is not intended as a curriculum. The module was written with the idea that a teacher would select activities or readings that could be “dropped into” existing curriculum, either as an attractive substitute for an old activity or as a supplement to existing activities. If you have a unit of study on separating mixtures, for example, you might use the Separating Cherry Cola lab in the module and simply refer briefly to the Taxol® story as a specific example of an important separation. However, the Taxol® story is so interesting that you might want to add dimension to students' understanding of the history of science by including it in addition to the laboratory activity.
The module's topic is, of course, cancer and cancer chemotherapy. In it you will find activities that support a broad range of knowledge and content skills:
- Inquiry skills
- Math skills
- Graphing skills
- General understanding of how science evolves
- Lab skills
- General health and wellness
We expect that chemistry teachers will be the principal users of this module, but health teachers, biology teachers and math teachers will find appropriate activities here. The site map on the main page of the teacher's guide has been coded to give you an idea about each activity. Each activity has been aligned with the National Science Standards and the New Jersey State Standards. This will be useful if you are looking for activities to support one or more of those standards.
Despite the fact that many of the activities are related, most can "stand alone." You can pick and choose those which are appropriate in your class or you can select a section that fits in your class and do all of it. You might use the section In a Puff of Smoke: Preventing Lung Cancer as an extension of class work on types of chemical reactions, oxidation in this case. The section You Become What You Eat: The Nutrition Factor might be used as an extension of a unit on simple organic chemistry. There are many possible ways you can use the module.
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