Collaborative PhUn Week Program Engages Elementary School Children in Physiology Learning and Jumpstarts Year‐Long Physiology Curriculum
Authors: Altman Robin , Whited Kellie 
Published: June 2021

In our inaugural Physiology Understanding (PhUn) Week program, California State University, Sacramento faculty collaborated with Sacramento Country Day School faculty to design and deliver interactive physiology activities for pre‐K through 4th grade students. Although highly impactful throughout our lives, physiology can often represent a daunting subject to teach and learn, especially for younger students with a limited background in the basic sciences on which to scaffold the instruction. To help surmount this problem and revise the existing Lower School science curriculum at Sacramento Country Day School to include an ongoing physiology component, we piloted this PhUn Week program as part of a holistic curricular redesign. The objectives of this program were thus: (1) initiate a curricular redesign for Lower School science (pre‐K through 5th grades), emphasizing ongoing study of physiology and use of the scientific method; (2) create and pilot a sustainable physiology outreach program to be delivered on an annual basis; (3) foster connections between Sac State and Sacramento Country Day School faculty to encourage further opportunities for collaboration. We planned the PhUn Week program as a mechanism to kick‐off a year‐long physiology curriculum in which each Lower School grade level studies a different body system: external sensory for pre‐K, cardiovascular for kindergarten, respiratory for first grade, musculoskeletal for second grade, gastrointestinal for third grade, and nervous for 4th grade. We designed interactive, hands‐on activities appropriate for each grade level to explore their body system of focus. As an extension of the PhUn Week activities and to further collaboration between Sac State and Sacramento Country Day School, 5th grade students will conduct a review of the body systems as part of their curriculum and will visit Sac State in the spring to perform a physiology experiment in a college laboratory setting. Programmatic content for the pre‐K through 4th graders was delivered by faculty from both institutions in the students' home classrooms or an individualized setting appropriate for the specific activity. In the weeks following PhUn Week, Sacramento Country Day School faculty have already begun building on the initial PhUn Week activities by presenting additional content relevant to the topic introduced during PhUn Week. They will continue to do so throughout the remainder of the academic year. Over the course of PhUn Week, 167 students and 16 teachers/teaching assistants actively participated in and benefitted from the program. Feedback collected during and after PhUn Week indicated a high level of satisfaction with the experience. Student participants demonstrated tremendous engagement with the activities and excitement about their upcoming physiology studies. Sacramento Country Day School expressed enthusiasm and excitement about the new curricular revisions and the potential of future PhUn Weeks.

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.