It's Systematic, My Dear Watson

As we got back into the swing of things this week, one of the concepts that drove our learning was that of systems. We pondered the word and searched our memory banks to see what we already knew about the topic. Students came up with ideas such as "an order of stuff"  and "a list of steps that makes a job go smoothly" and "a branch of things like on a tree." 

After that, we started discussing words that come up in a dictionary definition of the term, such as "interdependent," "multiple components," and "accomplish a purpose." We then began exploring how systems can be natural or man-made, and finally we zeroed in on the idea that plants and animals are actually systems...an individual organism is a system and it fits within larger systems such as an ecosystem.    

This was all to kick off of our new expedition about the systems that comprise plants and animals and enable them to live. 

One way we began investigating life systems was to look at the basic building block of both plants and animals--the cell. 

Here students are using microscopes to examine human cheek cells and onion cells:

Here students participate in a really fun way to demonstrate that each part of a system depends on the other parts. When the parts are working, it can accomplish its purpose, but when even one part malfunctions there is an impact on the whole system:

Another way students were exposed to systems was in math, where we systematically gathered information to investigate a question about data landmarks and probability. Had we not ordered the process of our investigation we couldn't have drawn reliable conclusions. We are playing many, many rounds of a card game called "First to Finish" in order to discover whether or not it is a fair game and why:

Taking measurements of ourselves was another way we systematically gathered data and used it for practice with metrics such as mean, median, mode, and range:

Finally, one could say society is a system and it only works if its primary components--people--work together in a cooperative way. To that aim, the older REMS crews took great delight in a presentation called "Choose Your Life" that drove home serious points about bullying in a fun way: