Medical Case Studies as Inquiry Entry Points in Biology

Unlike teaching chemistry where I can quickly leverage a myriad of different demonstrations and video clips to generate student inquiry around a topic of study, I find it difficult to do the same thing in my Biology classes. Last year I decided to take a different approach to 9th grade Biology class and leverage my family background in medicine (I come from a family of Doctors, Nurses and Pharmacists) and emphasize medicine, physiology and disease as a way to frame certain topics and build curiosity. 

To do this, I strategically wrote various case studies about hypothetical patients presenting specific disease symptoms and challenged my students in groups to diagnose the patients. To my surprise, this activity was extremely well-received, and from my perspective, was just as successful at opening up a window into exploring a specific topics in Biology as a perplexing  demonstration or video clip would be in my chemistry class. 

For example, if we were embarking on a unit of study about metabolism, I would begin with a case study about a patient with Type II Diabetes. Or when we began a unit on genetics, I presented a case study about an individual with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. While students researched the symptoms on sites such as WebMD and the MayoClinic, they would stumble upon literature, vocabulary and processes that were, unknowing to them, deeply connected to the subject we would begin investigating in the following days. Below are links to a few case studies completed by students last spring.